LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



siicif ^..Bq 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



SUPPRESSED CHAPTERS 

AND OTHER BOOKISHNESS 



SUPPRESSED CHAPTERS 



AND OTHER BOOKISHNESS 



BY 



ROBERT BRIDGES 

AUTHOR OF "OVERHEARD IN ARCADV 




£pt-e* 



f 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1895 






Copyright, 1895, bv 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRIMTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



CONTENTS 



ppreseeb £0apfers 


PAGE 


A New Dolly Dialogue, 


• 3 


Trilby s Christmas, .... 


■ 7 


Narcissus and Hesper on Wheels, 


. ii 


Little Wayoff, 


■ ^5 


Lost Chords, ...... 


. iS 


Buy the Ldiot Brand, .... 


. 21 


Some Remarks of Major Brace, . 


. 24 



($rcabicm feeders 

To Terence Mulvaney, . 
To Eva due Galbraith, . 
To Diana of the Crossways, Surrey, 
To One who is Tired of Reading, 
To Jean at Twenty-two, . , 

To a Certain Critic, 
To a Friend Starting on a Vacation, 
v 



29 
32 
36 
40 

43 
46 

49 



(Uotjefs t$at (BuergBobg (Keao 

Lord Ormoiit and his Aminta, 
The Manxman, 
Trilby, ..... 
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, 
The Prisoner of Zenda, 
Ships that Pass in the Night, 
Katharine Lauderdale, . 
The Jungle Book, . 
Pembroke, .... 
David Balfour, 



PAGE 

55 
5S 
61 

65 

68 

7i 
74 
7S 
81 



£0e feifercurg (partition of Jkoffcmo 

The Literary Partition of Scotland, . . 89 

J. M. Barrie, 91 

S. R. Crockett, 96 

Lan Maclaren, ...... 100 

Srienbe tn (^rcobg 

Charles Dana Gibson, ..... joj 

A. B. Frost 108 

F. Marion Crawford, ..... i/j 

Henry van Dyke, ...... 130 

vi 



PAGE 



$rcabtcm Opinions 

Summer Reading, , /jy 

Sant' Ilario in Camp, ..... jao 
A Legend of the Happy Valley, , . . i 44 

A Plea for Diana, T ^g 

A Cure for the Malady of Cleverness, . 134 
The Patriotic Novel, jcj 



SUPPRESSED CHAPTERS 



A NEW DOLLY DIALOGUE 

WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO ANTHONY HOPE, AUTHOR OF 
"THE PRISONER OF ZENDA," "THE DOLLY DIALOGUES," 
ETC., ETC. 

" IT'S a small world," said Dolly, pouring the tea 

1 slowly that I might admire the curve of her 
wrist. 

" But large enough to hold the one woman in the 
world for me, Lady Mickleham," I ventured, as 1 
turned my back upon her and looked out of the win- 
dow, while I lighted a cigarette. 

" Oh, is she the gardener's daughter walking down 
by the greenhouses?" asked Dolly, with her usual 
pique. 

"At any rate she is a hot-house product," I 
drawled, "ripened by sunshine, flattery, wealth, and 
culture." 

"Coveted by many, and loved by none! " vent- 
ured Dolly. 

" Owned by nobody and loved by one," said I, 
sadly. 

Lady Mickleham looked pensively into the bottom 
of her tea-cup. 

3 



" You are only making phrases," at length said 
Dolly. 

" And that is better than making love, Lady 
Mickleham." 

"You can't speak with authority," flashed Dolly, 
" for you always make phrases but never make love ! " 

"Except to another man's wife," I added, with 
a glance at Dolly. 

" Because it can never commit you to matrimony," 
she remarked. "You never mean business," she 
added, spitefully. 

" Love is an art and not a trade, Lady Mickle- 
ham. Business is for common people." 

" Now you are talking like Mr. Hope," snapped 
Dolly. "I met him the other night at the Dowa- 
ger's, and all his sentences were built like that." 

" He thinks the modern young woman likes that 
kind," I mused. 

"Why?" 

" Because it passes for cleverness, Lady Mickle- 
ham, and we brutes like to think that you are clever." 

"Aren't we, Mr. Brute?" 

"You are always cleverer than you seem," I re- 
plied, sententiously. 

"But Mr. Hope makes us seem cleverer than we 
are," affirmed Dolly. 

" Mr. Hope does not half know you,'" said I, hop- 
ing that Dolly might grasp the delicate compliment. 

Dolly poured another cup of tea with her left hand, 
showing another equally beautiful wrist. 
4 



" I wonder if Mr. Hope ever met a woman who 
would listen to a man who spoke in epigrams for five 
continuous minutes?" I mused as I lighted another 
cigarette. 

"There never was such a man," replied Dolly. 
" When men talk they orate for ten minutes, and ex- 
pect the women to listen in rapt attention." 

"That's to prevent the women from chattering," 
said I, with rare courtesy. 

" The talk of the advanced young woman of so- 
ciety is not chatter," cut in Dolly. 

"It's worse ! " 

"What? " 

"Vulgar," I murmured, with my eyes on Dolly's 
little curls. 

There was silence for the space of half a minute. 

" The women in Mr. Hope's stories are not vul- 
gar," at length ventured Dolly. 

" Atrociously smart," said I. 

"Why can't we say bright things?" queried 
Dolly. 

" You do — but not in modern novels." 

"Why?" 

"You are simply allowed to ask conundrums for 
the men to answer in double-headed epigrams," I 
replied. 

" But don't men like to think that they are giving 
women a lot of superior information ? " asked Dolly, 
glancing out of the corners of her eyes. 

" We do like to patronize you," I admitted, in a 
5 



moment of rare generosity. "But we also like to 
love you," I added, pensively. 

"Well, and aren't we lovable?" Dolly asked, 
with a bewitching smile. 

"Not in current fiction," I said. "There you 
are blase, inquisitive, and immodest," I continued, 
showing unusual warmth. , 

" Not all that ! " protested Dolly. 

"More, much more," said I, walking toward the 
chimney-place. " Your talk is like the crackling of 
thorns under a pot, and you hope to enter the king- 
dom of knowledge by way of the backstairs of im- 
pertinent frankness. You wish to make men admire 
and respect you by talking of subjects that they re- 
serve for their grosser moments. ' ' 

" Now you are horrid, perfectly horrid, and you 
may go home," said Dolly, petulantly. 

" Would you drive me away from you to the 
women of those books ? " I asked, gently. 

"You may stay," said Dolly, as she poured an- 
other cup of tea with both wrists. 



TRILBY'S CHRISTMAS 

IT was on the night of that famous Christmas supper 
in the place St. Anatole des Arts, when Zouzou 
and the others had sung their songs and the three 
policemen were laid out in a stupor behind the stove, 
that the Laird and Taffy and Trilby and Little Billee 
had a little conversation (as they sat apart on the 
model throne eating their plum-pudding) that is not 
recorded in the book. 

" Ay, maun," said the Laird, " but they're mak- 
ing a fuss about us in America ! ' ' 

" It's all on account of Trilby," said Little Billee, 
with a fond look at her knuckle-bone teeth. 

" They are all palavering a lot of tommy-rot about 
hie," cut in Trilby, speaking in her best English, 
which she learned from her Irish father, and which 
was classical, though it smacked of County Cork. 

" Worse than that, my dear Trilby," said Taffy, 
whirling Svengali around his head like an Indian 
club, between drinks. "Lots of pretty women over 
there, I am told, are raving over you simply because 
they think it is ' advanced ' and ' up to date ' to ad- 
7 



mire a woman whom they are pleased to think a little 
bit wicked." 

" Me wicked! " shrieked Trilby, her Irish up — 
' ' and me the best blanchisseuse de fin in the Quar- 
tier Latin." 

" It isn't the laundry work that attracts their ad- 
miration, my lass," said the Laird, in his most father- 
ly manner. " It's the posing for ' the altogether ' 
and several other little incidents in your career that 
make you interesting for them." 

"Oh," said Trilby, in real distress, "I've been 
trying for months to forget all those things, and now 
I am to become a literary classic on account of them ! " 
(Trilby caught the fine language from the lamented 
O'Ferrall when he was loquacious in his cups.) 

" The penalty of fame," said the philosophic Laird, 
" is to be indiscriminately praised, and generally for 
the wrong thing. I suppose that I shall be remem- 
bered longer for my singing of ' The Laird of Cock- 
pen ' than for my Royal Academy pictures." 

"Which is right," growled Taffy, who had re- 
cently come from Barbizon. "The Royal Acad- 
emy seldom confers immortality on a worthy paint- 
er." 

" Those Americans don't seem to love Trilby for 
the things that make us love her," piped up Little 
Billee. " They talk and write a great deal about the 
mere accidental things in her character, but they 
don't see that we all love her because she is simply a 
royal, good comrade with no frills about her — with 



a man's standard of honor, which she keeps to the 
uttermost." 

"Little Billee," cried Trilby, reaching for him 
with her slipper, "in the language of an American 
friend of mine, you're a chump ! " 

" The trouble with Billee," mused Taffy, " is that 
he is too high strung, and does not take exercise 
enough. He is just the sort of a fellow who generally 
' dies for love ' in novels. It isn't nice, and there is 
no need for it in novels or real life. Five miles a day 
on a trotting horse will save his life." 

" Trilby will save my life," sighed Billee, with a 
tender glance at her freckles. 

" The worst thing I've heard said about our good 
friend, Du Maurier, who is bound to make us fa- 
mous," said Taffy, switching away from the sentimen- 
tal Billee, "is that he writes neither good English 
nor good French, but a mixture of the slang of each, 
which thirty years from now will be almost unintel- 
ligible without a glossary." 

"And yet they call it a revival of the style of 
Thackeray ! " snorted the Laird. 

" We must not pick our friends to pieces on Christ- 
mas night," said Taffy, rising. " What the story of 
our old studio is teaching them over in England and 
America is that there is nothing in this world to be 
compared to the loyal comradeship of men, and 
women too, who love each other as brothers, who 
seize the day of pleasure as it passes, and stand closer 
together when the night of sorrow comes. Up all of 
9 



you ! Dodor, Gecko, Zouzou — Drink the Christmas 
toast. Here's to my friend and my brother — all 
mankind ! (Sings) 



" Drink, every one ; 
Pile up the coals. 
Fill the red bowls, 
Round the old tree ! 



NARCISSUS AND HESPER ON WHEELS 

WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO RICHARD LE GALLIENNE, 
AUTHOR OF "THE BOOK-BILLS OF NARCISSUS." 

WHEN Narcissus asked Hesper to go a-wheeling, 
there had been a great thaw in midwinter that 
cleared the streets of snow, and then a keen frost that 
made them all crisp and hard and smooth as any poet 
and his maid could wish. The sun was shining very 
bright and the sky was waving its blue over them ; 
the eyes of Hesper were very bright and blue also 
with the joy of living on such a day. But Narcissus 
thought it was the light of love in her eyes. Now, 
as everybody knows, Narcissus is a vain man. 

The talk began at the foot of a long hill that over- 
looks a broad river reaching to the sea. They had 
chattered before about tires, and high gears, and up- 
curve handle-bars ; but when they reached the foot of 
the hill and caught the first glimpse of the river that 
was to broaden and sweep into great majesty as they 
ascended the hill, they knew that they must talk. For 
Narcissus thought he was a poet, and Hesper half-be- 
lieved him. 

"It is a very long hill," said Hesper, with her 
ii 



wistful eyes on the summit, " and I am glad that I am 
not to take it alone. ' ' 

" Life is a longer hill, said Narcissus, with a sigh, 
" and we are taking it alone." 

" We don't have to," chirped Hesper, with a dan- 
gerous twinkle in her eyes. 

''Some of us do," still sighed Narcissus. "We 
are philosophers. ' ' 

" The wisest men have always wed," called Hes- 
per, in little trilling catches, as she panted over a 
hummock in the road. 

Then they reached a short level place about half- 
way up, and Narcissus said that they would stop a 
while, and he would tell her why ! So they leaned 
across their saddles looking in each other's eyes. 

"I've thought it all out," said Narcissus, in his 
most oracular manner, " and this is Wisdom : Love 
is no doubt the finest expression of the joy of life. .It 
is not a delusion, but a very real thing while it lasts. 
But every man who has lived thirty years knows that 
the joy of life is an affair of youth. It is mind and 
heart and body all awake to new sensations. Very 
well," he continued, as though Hesper were agreeing 
with him, " we know then that for the forty or fifty 
years that are left us of living we must see and feel 
the glory fade from the spectacle of the world. In- 
stead of being a spontaneous joy, life is to gradually 
become a cool, gray monotony of living. At its very 
best it is that — even without the stings of misfortune 
that may be added to it." 
12 



" Well, what of it ? " asked Hesper. "What has 
that to do with the marriage question ? " 

" Everything ! If a man must not only endure 
this forty years of growing old for himself, but see 
the woman he loves and worships going down the 
same gray walk to death — is he not in a tenfold more 
tragical plight ? And the more he loves her, if he is 
a man of sensitive feeling, the more he must suffer. 
It is not a crisis of a day, an accident of fortune to be 
met and conquered — that is easy ; but it is all there 
is of life — immitigably all ! ' ' 

"And to escape that increased anguish you would 
voluntarily choose to let the woman you love go her 
' gray walk to death ' alone ? ' ' asked Hesper. 

"Surely — that is wisdom for both." 

' ' Oh, you cowardly, selfish man ! ' ' she hurled at 
him, with snapping eyes. " You call love ' the finest 
expression of the joy of life,' and yet you would miss 
it for a year-and-a-day, simply that for a score or 
more of years you may in tranquil loneliness watch 
the color and sunlight fade from the landscape, with 
no woman to bother you about her own views of the 
spectacle. You are the final product of luxurious 
sophistry. You don't deserve this one hour of sun- 
shine and glorious exercise, let alone the view of the 
river yonder. You can't always have these things 
either, and yet you seize and enjoy them when you 
may ! Why not love also ? Give me a year of per- 
fect companionship with the man I love, and the rest 
of life may be as gray as it pleases fate to send it. 
13 



For me it will always glow with the memory of that 
year ! " 

Hesper was on fire with anger, and she left him and 
wheeled furiously up the hill. 

Now Narcissus was a strong man, as well as vain 
and selfish, and within a few yards he overtook her 
fleeing and struggling on a steep place. He reached 
one hand to her saddle, and so gently pushed her 
over the steep place and up to the summit, that, when 
they stood in an embrasure of the wall at the top and 
looked out at the glorious river, she had already half 
forgiven him. 

"It was good of you to do that after I had said 
angry words to you," she said. 

" Oh, I have a great deal of strength to spare," 
said Narcissus, vainly. 

" Don't you think you might have enough strength 
to spare for the woman you really loved to last you 
for the rest of your life?" laughed Hesper in his 
very face. Then she whirled away down the steep 
hill like a swallow dipping to the level of the river. 

And whether Narcissus ever overtook her to answer 
the question, I know not. 



14 



LITTLE WAYOFF 

WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO HENRIK IBSEN, AUTHOR OF 
"LITTLE EYOLF," "A DOLL'S HOUSE," ETC. 

Scene — A summer-house overlooking a Norwegian Fjord. All- 
MERS and his wife RlTA seated within, looking out to sea, and 
earnestly conversing. 

RLLMERS : You must realize once for all, Rita, 
that I am seriously afflicted with the disease of 
the decade — Ibsenism — and you must conform your 
life to that new condition. 

Rita: Yes, yes — I'll try, dear. What is this aw- 
ful malady ? 

Allmers : Ibsenism is the yellow jaundice of the 
soul. 

Rita : Horrors ! Is there no remedy suggested in 
all the books of your great library ? 

Allmers {solemnly) : None. The peculiarity of 
the disease is that no one who catches it wants to be 
cured. 

Rita : What ! Are you content to live the rest 
of your life seeing things sicklied o'er with a yellow- 
green light ? 

Allmers : Not only content but glad to do it ! 
15 



The intellect demands this sacrifice of the man who 
is truly wise. 

Rita : But I am naturally of a hopeful disposition. 
I love sunshine and joy and good-fellowship. True, 
I am temporarily depressed by the drowning of our 
only son, Little Wayoff, but I think that in time I 
might begin to smile again if you would only love me 
as you used. 

Allmers {impressively) : Love is the temporary 
insanity of the emotions ! I am sane. 

Rita : But once you loved me passionately, and 
we were very happy. 

Allmers : Yes, yes — happiness is the final expres- 
sion of insanity. The truly healthy man is never 
happy. 

Rita (with resignation) : Well, then, I'll try hard 
to be miserable enough to be a congenial companion 
for you. Only tell me the way. 

Allmers : First of all you must rake through the 
records of the past for all the diseases, crimes, and ter- 
rible weaknesses of your ancestors. When you have 
discovered them, carefully ponder over them, for by 
the immutable Laws of Nature you have inherited 
them all and carry them around in your beautiful 
body. They are liable to break out at any time, 
singly or all together. 

Rita (frightened to death) : Save me, save me 
dear ! Am I truly only a mausoleum for the dead 
past of my family ? 

Allmers (sternly) : You are all that and more too. 
16 



Nature always adds a few frills to inherited weakness 
and crime on her own account. By the law of the 
universe you ought to be a little worse than any of 
your ancestors. 

Rita (in despair) : That settles it ! I don't want 
to live any longer. Throw me in the fjord yonder 
to help feed the pretty fishes along with Little Way- 
off. Oh, my boy, my boy, your mother comes to 
you ! (Rushes toward the edge of the cliff.) 

Allmers (catching her) : Stay ! Do you really 
want to die ? 

Rita : Yes, believe me, yes ! Who could live in 
such a world as this ! 

Allmers (with a gleam of pleasure in his eyes) : 
Come to my arms, my own love ! Now, at last, are 
you my true soul-mate. Under the shadow of this 
awful gloom we can go through the world together, 
doing our little best to thicken the sorrow and de- 
spair wherever we find it. This is our destiny. Come. 
(Embraces her.) 

Rita : And after thirty or forty years of this gloom 
we may be fitted to join our beloved Little Wayoff in 
another world ? 

Allmers : Perhaps, perhaps ! 

[curtain.] 



17 



LOST CHORDS 

WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO GEORGE EGERTON, AUTHOR 
OF " DISCORDS." 

SHE sits on a fallen log by the banks of a tumbling 
mountain brook ; the air is filled with the odor 
of fir, and the glint of sunshine is on the moss, and 
in her gray eyes, and upon her bronze-gold hair. 
This unequalled combination of moss and sunshine 
and feminine loveliness is enough to stir to its depths 
the heart of any man. How much more the heart of 
the impressionable poet at her feet ! 

" You se^in me," she said to him, in her trumpet- 
voice, " the embodiment of the new idea of woman- 
hood. Once my life was nearly wrecked by ' ignor- 
ant innocence.' I've risen to my present serene 
altitude by a thorough course of 'all-seeing knowl- 
edge. ' When I say knowledge you must understand 
that I refer to all the evil and wickedness in which 
men are habitually engaged. A three-years' course 
in the study of vice has, it is true, disillusionized me 
— but it has made me strong ! ' ' 

As she said this she tossed a bowlder into the tum- 
bling stream with her left hand, then placidly brushed 



the dust from her great fingers with one of the ribbons 
of her very simple, but perfectly correct, Paris-made 
gown. 

"Tell me," asked the poet, with beseeching eyes, 
" what are all these vicious things that I must under- 
stand before I can be strong? Pity my ignorance. 
You know that I have been five years at Eton, 
where I was captain of our football team, and four 
years at Oxford, where I was stroke of the 'Varsity 
crew — but what I know is nothing when compared to 
you. Vice and wickedness are neither required nor 
elective at Oxford. Please pity me ! You know that 
I have no sister to warn me of the cruel and wicked 
world." 

" Poor fellow ! " she replied, softening her voice to 
the mellow tones of thunder. " How many promis- 
ing young men are lost because they have no sisters 
to warn them of the sinfulness of the great world ! 
I'll be a sister to you, my dear boy." 

Saved ! murmured the brook, as it tumbled along 
into the valley. Saved ! And the wind in the firs 
caught up the melody and added to it — Saved, for 
she knows it all ! 

The poet ventured near enough to kiss the hem of 
her Paris gown. Then in a kind, sisterly way she 
told him of all the outrageously wicked things she 
had discovered during her period of regeneration. 

"But, oh, my dear sister," said the poet, blush- 
ing from head to foot all over his puny six-feet-two 
of manly strength, " must I do all these wicked things 

19 



before I can be considered strong enough to battle 
with the world ? ' ' 

She looked unutterable things at him with her 
great eyes, and slowly said : " Know you not that it 
is only for a few of the great, soulful spirits of the 
world to do these things ! But for most women and all 
men it is enough for their regeneration that they sim- 
ply read about them thoroughly, and, if they have the 
talent, write books about them for innocent boys and 
girls to read by the sweet and gentle fireside of home." 

" But don't you think their mothers might object 
to their reading such books ? ' ' ventured the poet, 
doubtfully. 

"Mothers!" she shrieked, scornfully. "Don't 
speak to me of mothers ! Oh, the crimes of igno- 
rance that are committed in their name ! Mothers 
are women who habitually associate with Men — think 
of it, great, gross, wicked Men — who actually pay 
their rent and buy household supplies for them, and 
feed and clothe their children ; yea, and even send 
them to school and college. Think of a woman who 
will accept these favors from a man, and then talk to 
me of mothers ! My boy, my boy, how far you are 
from the kingdom of the new womanhood ! Go, I 
cannot talk to you more now. Some day, if you re- 
turn to me scarred with crime, I may venture again 
to associate with you. But not now — you contam- 
inate me with your presence. Go ! " 

The poet kissed the hem of her garment again, and 
vanished amid the trees. 



"BUY THE IDIOT BRAND" 

WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO JOHN KENDRICK BANGS, AU- 
THOR OF "COFFEE AND REPARTEE," "THE IDIOT," ETC. 

" I_FE'RE going to start a great Consolidated Amer- 

JEm ican Humor Factory," said the Idiot, as he 
caromed on a buckwheat-cake and hit the sausage 
square. This off-hand remark immediately gained 
the attention of Mrs. Pedagog's breakfast -table. 

" Who are we? " asked the Bibliomaniac with his 
usual undercurrent of scepticism. 

"Bangs and I," said the Idiot, as he pocketed 
buckwheat-cake No. i, and drew No. 2 into fine po- 
sition. 

" What Bangs? John Kendrick Bangs, the humor- 
ist?" asked the Poet, in wide-eyed astonishment. 
" Do you know a real live author ? " 

" The same," said the Idiot, playing for position 
on the left rail of his plate. ' ' Bangs and I are bosom 
friends. You must understand that John Kendrick 
Bangs who writes for the great magazines, J. K. 
Bangs of the Sunday papers, Carlyle Smith of the 
comic weeklies, J. Kendrick Bangs of the Yonkers 
Citizen, and John K. Bangs the politician, are one 
21 



and the same individual. T am the bosom friend of 
the whole aggregation." 

" The aggregation must be shy of bosom friends 
when it takes you," sniffed Mr. Pedagog. 

" Wrong again, as usual, Mr. Pedagog," chirped 
the Idiot as he reached for the maple syrup and dug 
the old gentleman in the ribs. " I'm a very profit- 
able friend and Bangs knows a good thing when he 
sees it. That's why I am in on the ground floor of 
the Consolidated American Humor Factory. Great 
idea, great head, great man ! " 

" Doubt it," grunted the School-master. " Your 
adjectives are always ten sizes too large for your ideas. ' ' 

" But you must notice, my charitable friend, that I 
am gradually growing up to my adjectives," insinu- 
atingly said the Idiot. " Another great idea of mine 
— start with big adjectives and try hard to live up to 
them. Before you know it you're a big man. See ! " 

" That has nothing to do with the Factory. Tell 
us about it," said Mr. Brief, impatiently. 

" Same general line of thought, Mr. Brief," re- 
plied the Idiot. "Bangs is nothing if not original. 
He said to himself one day, ' Here are a lot of fellows 
I know travelling all over the world for literary and 
artistic experiences — Material they call it. What's 
the matter with manufacturing experiences right here 
at home for half the cost ! I believe in encouraging 
home industries.' So he decided to blow in some 
money and run for Mayor of Yonkers. That town 
narrowly missed having a dandy Mayor, but Bangs 



got his money's worth of experience — and the result 
was ' Three Weeks in Politics/ one of his most suc- 
cessful books." 

' ' But what about the Factory ? ' ' asked the indignant 
boarders in chorus, looking at the dining-room clock. 

" I've just given you the germinal idea," said the 
Idiot. "Says Bangs to me — ' Idiot, old boy, we'll 
go right ahead manufacturing humorous experiences 
on a large scale. I'll build a magnificent villa on 
the banks of the Hudson, not far from my home. 
It shall be divided into about fifty suites of comforta- 
ble apartments, with good table-board, plenty of out- 
door sports, and everything to keep the guests in 
good humor. I'll invite up for long visits a choice 
assortment of mothers - in - law, bad boys, Irish co- 
medians, Yankee farmers, summer girls, brakemen, 
bunco-steerers, and all the other indispensable char- 
acters for American humor. Then I'll just come 
over for an hour or two every day and visit with them 
— and my books will write themselves. And you 
shall have a ground-floor suite, Mr. Idiot, and manage 
the whole show. Are you with me ? ' 'I'm yours 
for life, Mr. Bangs,' said I. No humor from this 
Factory genuine unless countersigned by me. Buy 
the Idiot Brand ! ' ' 

" And so, Mrs. Pedagog," said the Idiot, turning 
to the head of the table, " I give you notice that I 
must quit your hospitable board. But I'll invite you 
all up to stay awhile at the Factory. Bangs needs 
you in his business. Ta, ta ! " 
2 3 



SOME REMARKS OF MAJOR BRACE 

APROPOS OF "WINDFALLS OF OBSERVATION," BY EDWARD S. 
MARTIN. 

" I'VE been having a delightful afternoon," said 
1 Major Brace, as he slid into his favorite corner 
of the Club cafe, and rang the bell. The younger 
men were dropping in from down-town with the wor- 
riment of a financial crisis written on their faces, but 
the Major's serenity was perennial and contagious. 
They liked to hear him talk, and this was his favorite 
hour. As the Martini was placed before him he con- 
tinued : "While you youngsters have been hustling 
down town for dollars that are not in circulation, I 
have been up in the Club library reading Mar- 
tin's book, 'Windfalls of Observation.' There's a 
wise youth for you ! He has a good, workable phi- 
losophy which contains my three cardinal virtues 
for the man of the world — Courage, Gumption, 
Serenity." 

" Come, now, Major," said the Impertinent Youth. 
" Everybody knows that you pat Martin on the back 
because he occasionally puts your harangues in print. 
A little bit flattered, eh ? " 
24 



"There is something in what you say," replied 
the Major, affably. " We all have our little vanities. 
But discounting the vanity, I want you boys to read 
the ' Windfalls. ' I am twice the age of any one of 
you, and I know what is good for a man of thirty. 
And I say that it is good for men of your years to 
believe many of the things that Martin talks about. 
Most of you are university and professional men. 
You imagine that you have lived a long time, and 
that you see clear through to the end of the journey. 
As a matter of fact you are just fairly started. You 
are all a little cynical ; it takes the form of mistrust 
of all men and most women. When you only knew 
your own folks and a limited circle of friends, you 
imagined that the world was filled with good, decent 
people. But your business and professions have 
brought you in violent contact with the other kind, 
and now you go to the other extreme and believe 
that most men are rogues. Oh, the cruelty of the 
wisdom of youth ! 

" But what I like in these essays of Martin's is the 
fine charity which seasons the wisdom of youth. He 
looks on the world with the keen eyes of a young 
man, but tempers his judgments with that equipoise 
and good-will which we are accustomed to associate 
with a lovable old age. That is why I am commend- 
ing his philosophy to you. The sooner you put your- 
self in that attitude, the sooner will you grasp the 
secret of the perpetual youth of the heart. When you 
begin to look for the finer, honest side in the men and 
25 



women you meet, you yourself become the touch- 
stone that reveals it in them. You find your way in 
life cheered with this atmosphere of good-will, which 
you in part create yourself, and partly reveal in others. 

'• I know I am preaching a little," said the Major, 
as he noticed signs of uneasiness among the boys. 
" But that is one of the privileges of my years. Be- 
sides you owe me something for listening to your long 
debates on legal and commercial questions, that are of 
no earthly account to anybody but money-grubbers. 
I am in dead earnest about this, because I like the 
enthusiasms of youth and hate its cynicisms; and 
when I find a young man writing sweet-tempered, 
acute, serene, and manly essays like these, I want 
other young men to read them. They are so utterly 
without pretence or affectation of knowledge, and the 
humor ripples through the pages like a clear brook in 
a meadow. 

" You must not think from what I have been say- 
ing that he has no eye for human frailties. Why, the 
satire pricks something at every turn, like briers along 
the brook ! But it is the peaceful dwelling together in 
these pages of satire and good feeling, humor and good 
manners, that makes the charm of the book for me. 

" Now, you must not tell Martin what I have been 
saying. He'll think I want him to publish some 
more of my Views. I don't. Waiter, take the or- 
ders ! " 



26 



ARCADIAN LETTERS 



TO TERENCE MULVANEY 

APROPOS OF " MANY INVENTIONS," BY RUDYARD KIPLING. 

RH, Terence, my boy, Mr. Kipling has been tell- 
ing us some more of your stories, and they are 
making glad the hearts of your old friends. We had 
heard that you were out of the army, and boss of a 
gang of coolies on a railway in Central India — 
" Ker'nel on the railway line, an' a consequinshal 
man," as you graphically put it; and we feared your 
new job would put an end to your tales. But here 
you are again in finer form than ever ! For myself, 
I don't think you ever span a better yarn than " My 
Lord, the Elephant " — though there are impertinent 
fellows who assert that you have often come nearer 
the truth. They don't know you, my boy, and I 
want to say that I have no more doubt that you rode 
the must elephant around the barracks at Cawnpore, 
than I have that Dinah Shadd is the best wife that 
ever fell to the lot of one of the Queen's soldiers. 
And that other tale of yours about the man you nick- 
named " Love-o'- Women " — I wonder if you know 
that it is what literary men call "a pathetic trag- 
edy?" No, you don't, Terence, and I hope you 
29 



never may — for when you begin to look on your 
stories in that fashion they'll cease to be worth telling. 
What people like about you over on this side of the 
earth is that you, and Jock and Ortheris as well, are 
brave men who take hold of the things nearest you 
without much bellowing ; and you never whine when 
you are hurt. As Ortheris puts it, "I ain't a recruity 
to go whinin' about my rights to this an' my rights 
to that, as if I couldn't look after myself. My rights ! 
'Streweth A'mighty ! I'm a man ! " 

I don't mind telling you, confidentially, that we 
need some tales like yours and Mr. Kipling's over 
here. We have a good many fine young men writing 
stories, but they spend most of their time putting 
frills on them. As Stanley would say, there are " a 
lot o' bloomin' petticoats" in their stories, and they 
sit around on " piazzas " and talk to young men who 
are about as useless as a subaltern just out from Eng- 
land. Nobody ever does anything ; they simply 
think great big thoughts that congest in their bloom- 
in' heads. 

You are away off in India, and might think from 
this that we are a rum lot — but we are not. We have 
plenty of men who can do things without making a 
fuss — fight great battles, build immense railroads, in- 
vent wonderful machines, or put a World's Fair to- 
gether in two years that beat all records. Mr. Kip- 
ling does not like us because we are too sensitive 
about many other things that we can't do ; and that's 
true, too. But then, you know, we should not get 



ahead if we were not a little sensitive. You don't 
know where to stretch a shoe until it pinches you. 

But it does not matter what Mr. Kipling thinks of 
us ; we know a good story when we see it, and we 
shall go right along reading his and yours, and asking 
for more, and waiting for that Great Novel which you 
and I know he is man enough to write some day. 

With my regards to Dinah Shadd. 



3i 



TO EVADNE GALBRAITH 

APROPOS OF "THE HEAVENLY TWINS," BY MADAM SARAH 
GRAND. 

DEAR MADAM : As the heroine of a book about 
which England has been talking, you have, no 
doubt, by this time gauged English opinion in regard 
to your advanced views about the rights of women. 
But the American view must be rather vague to you 
by reason of your aloofness from our sympathies in 
such questions. I know that, with your strong wish 
to look on Truth squarely, you will pardon a very ex- 
plicit statement of the causes which have operated to 
keep American women out of accord with your views 
as interpreted by Madam Grand in "The Heavenly 
Twins." I think that your friend Mrs. Malcomson 
expressed very tersely this feeling of "difference" 
when she said, with some indignation : " Oh, yes, we 
have our reward, we Englishwomen. We religiously 
obey our men. We do nothing of which they disap- 
prove. We are the meekest sheep in the world. We 
scorn your independent, outspoken American women ; 
we think them bold and unwomanly, and do all we can 
to be as unlike them as possible. And what happens ? 
3 2 



Do our men adore us? Well, they continue to say 
so. But it is the Americans they marry." 

If you will pardon a blunt statement of it, I think 
you will find that it is this very "difference " which 
will incline the American girl to be amused at your 
warmth about certain rights for women, rather than 
be stirred up to join you in a crusade for them. She 
.will toss her pretty head and say, with accustomed 
frankness : 

" Bless you, dear Madam, why should we organize 
to make a fight for these rights, when we have them 
already without the asking ! Of course American 
girls do marry the kind of wicked men whom you 
preach against — and very often they are Englishmen. 
But then, you know, we don't do it from ignorance 
or because we have been educated in a corral. Dear 
no ! We either find the men interesting, or they 
have a title or some position that we want to share 
with them. Our eyes are open, and we know what 
we want, and generally get it. Sometimes we find 
that we have made a bad bargain. Of course, that is 
a part of the risk of the game. But if we do, we 
follow the example of our American fathers when they 
have been caught by a bad bargain — we speculate in 
futures in the hope of making things come out even. 
Few American girls stake all their life on love and 
marriage ; we can play the game for so many other 
stakes. There is social position for one; reputation 
as aii intellectual woman for another (dear me, how 
easily we can make the men believe that we are 
33 



learned) ; then there are the Church and organized 
charity which give us abundant outlets for our execu- 
tive energies. For you must realize that we arc ex- 
ecutive above all things. That is why we are ceasing 
to be morbid. And, my dear lady, I fear you are 
very morbid. You yourself have said that thought 
which does not lead to action makes one morbid, and 
that has been your trouble. If you had simply spent 
two or three months organizing your crusade, you 
would have forgotten all your trouble. It would not 
matter whether you accomplished anything or not ; 
the cure is in the very act of organization. Why, we 
have doctors who will tell you on the sly that they 
have encouraged the organizing mania among women 
as a cure for nervous prostration. I know of one par- 
ticularly bad case where the physician hinted to the 
patient that there was a crying need for a society to 
provide East-Side waifs with tops in season. It was 
harmless, and it cured her. (That is the beauty of 
our men by the way, they let us do as we please, and 
yet manage us.)" 

The American girl, with her usual audacity, has 
filled most of my letter. But I want to say a word 
for the American man in contrast to the men in your 
story. Your men don't seem to have enough to do 
— that is why, perhaps, they spend so much time 
deceiving women. (I am referring to your men as 
you see them, and not as I believe they are.) Now 
the American man is a busy creature. If he does not 
have to work for a living, he is apt to create some en- 
34 



grossing work for his mere good pleasure. After all 
that has been said about it, we really have very few 
idle rich men here ; there are a great many more idle 
"little brothers of the rich "—a class of parasites 
who would be idle in any condition of life. When 
our men are busy, they are in it heart and soul for 
success, and that leaves little time for what is vicious. 
The spare time the American man has is occupied by 
some bright girl, who probably " knows the world " 
as well as he does and often "gives him points." 
You must not think them " bold and unwomanly," 
as your friend says. They simply look at things 
with clear eyes, and with a heart filled with that good- 
will for men and women that " thinketh no evil " — 
but, nevertheless, sees it if it exists. 

That, I take it, is all that you would ask or seek 
by your crusade. Just cross the ocean and find it ! 

Kindly express my thanks to Diavolo and Angelica, 
the heavenly twins, for the rich amusement their 
amazing personal cleverness has afforded us. 



35 



TO DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS, SURREY 

APROPOS OF " LOVE-LETTERS OF A WORLDLY WOMAN," BY 
MRS. \V. K. CLIFFORD. 

DEAR DIANA : You are always a graceful woman, 
in important and in trivial things, and in noth- 
ing are you so often tactful as in your little remem- 
brances for days and seasons. You write me that the 
hedges and the Downs in Surrey are full of the per- 
fume of Spring, and you feel sure that I shall be wan- 
dering into the country very soon to breathe the odor 
of apple-blossoms. So you send me the " Love- 
Letters of a Worldly Woman," which will be just the 
little book I want to read on the way down to the 
country, in the cars, and think about on the way 
back. "You will go a-looking for your lost youth 
in the springtime, and this little book will show you 
how far away it is," you add with a touch of irony. 

The letter and the book came as I was starting for 
Arcady and the old college, and I have read it while 
skimming along green fields, or sitting under the 
elms. It has brought back the old mood, as you 
knew it would, and I am not sure as I sit here whether 
it was yesterday or a hundred years ago, that I left 
these gray old cloisters and closed the doors on this 
36 



world of sentiment and aspiration. For it is to this 
world that these letters belong. 

The title, as you must have felt, is a misnomer — 
for none of these are the letters of a "worldly 
woman." In the three parts of the book it is essen- 
tially the same woman who writes — at different ages 
and degrees of experience. But she is always the 
woman of sentiment, romance, and aspiration — the 
sort of woman whom the group of " digs " in cap and 
gown, who are discussing the "eternal verities" in 
the next room, would worship, and then write perfect- 
ly correct hexameters in her honor. They would be- 
lieve that her little affectations of cynicism were real 
worldly wisdom, and stand a little bit in awe of them. 
But you, Diana, who knew the real world and suffered 
in it before you married dear old Redworth, would 
never be deceived by these assertions of womanly 
independence. 

I know what you think about her and I can almost 
hear you say it : " This woman is lovable, but she 
would be very uncomfortable in a family ; I know, 
for I was once like her ; and if I had married Tom in 
those days I should have ruined his career, simply by 
continually urging him to make what I called ' sacri- 
fices ' for success. That dear man is now a type of 
the right kind of success, but there is none of that 
sort of heroism in it which the woman who writes 
these letters worships in a man." 

What you and I really like about her is a certain 
fervor and intensity of love which she lavishes on her 
37 



ideal man. You know there never was such a man 
(except Tom Red worth), but if she should find him 
some day she would be sorry that she ever married 
Sir Noel, even though he should be Prime Minister. 
It is the possibility that a woman may cherish such a 
delusion about him that makes a man love her. If he 
can only be the hook on which she hangs her ideal 
man, he is content. So long as she does not distin- 
guish between the hook and the ideal, the real man is 
happy; but when she attempts to differentiate them 
his trouble begins. That is why you and I think that 
the woman of these clever stories is lovable, but un- 
comfortable. 

What I most like about her is that she clearly dis- 
tinguishes between what is really interesting and what 
is simply conventional, what is respectable and what 
is important. That is a line which few women draw, 
and not a host of men. I am inclined to think that 
it is as important as the " moral law " — perhaps it is 
the moral law in a nutshell. 

But it is growing very late ; the college clock is 
striking, and there is a rumpus outside the door. It 
is the boy (who calls me " Uncle " when he wants to 
tease, and "Jack" when he wants what he is pleased 
to call a locni) who enters with his comrades. " It is 
almost time for the Owl train back to the city, old 
man," he says, "and I am sorry you can't stay for 
our spread. ' ' The boys all carry mysterious packages, 
and I have a suspicion that there is little left of the 
" loan " the boy negotiated a few hours ago. 
3S 



It is a cheap price for a happy day and an evening 
of pleasant reverie in the very room that was once 
mine ; nothing left of the original shell but this old 
table which the boy says "must have come out of the 
Ark." At any rate I know that Noah was young 
when he bought it, and he wrote reams of letters on 
it to a woman who before the flood was called Diana 
Antonia Merion. 

The Cloisters, College of Arcadv. 



TO ONE WHO IS TIRED OF READING 

DEAR BOY : You write me from your lovely 
Southern island that you are sitting in the sun, 
and looking down a long avenue of live-oaks, fes- 
tooned with hanging moss and mistletoe. From 
your piazza you can see the deer dart across the open 
space, and hear the whir of partridge wings when 
they are startled. Over all the animated stillness 
lingers the low music of the summer ocean. And 
yet you are discontented because your books have 
lost their charm, and even dear old Horatius Flac- 
cus, who is your solace and your cheer, has ceased to 
charm you. And you expect me (shivering by a 
radiator, and listening to the sleet biting at the win- 
dow glass) to sympathize with you ! For long years 
we have been friends together, but my friendship 
does not reach that far. 

I could never understand why a man of your years 
and philosophy should make your appetite for read- 
ing a test of your general health. I suspect that it 
is because you have been always a successful man of 
affairs, and books have been your recreation. When 
you don't enjoy your recreation you rightly infer that 
40 



your vitality is running a little low. It would be 
equally true of horseback riding, or whist playing if 
they chanced to be your favorite amusements — and 
yet who would let his conscience worry him about 
loss of enjoyment in them ! 

You have the appreciative amateur's over-esteem 
for books and book-making. I have never heard you 
express any admiration for the work of great iron 
and steel contractors ; that happens to be your occu- 
pation, and you know how it is done, and what suc- 
cess in it costs. I have seen you come home after 
an all-day wrestle with giants in the railway world, 
whom you have brought 'round to your way of 
thinking at a directors' meeting. It cost yon blood 
and brains, and yet you showed no elation, no sense 
of victory ; you simply poked sarcasm at the whole 
lot of them, whom you had barely beaten, and, most 
of all, at yourself for expending so much energy on 
the affair. 

Then you would have your dinner, and your pipe, 
and the newest book perhaps, or a very old one. At 
intervals you would break out into explosions of ad- 
miration for some deftly turned phrase, or rhythmic 
line which a youngster somewhere on this or the 
other side of the sea had reeled off because he had 
spent most of his life in an easy-chair and liked to 
fool with pen and paper and his own emotions. 

If you had ever come nearer to it than the printed 
page, you would have a clear idea of what "an old 
woman's work" this writing business often is. It 
4i 



would be a rare sight to see a great, strong, alert 
giant like you pinned down to a desk, playing with 
words as though they were blocks in a puzzle. I can 
imagine you, after an hour or two of it, rising in your 
wrath and turning the whole business over to your 
type-writer, as suited better to her placid, mechanical 
way of life. 

" Give me men," you would cry, " to move my 
way, and carry out my ideas ! Let me deal with 
real forces and great masses of material things that 
may be builded into realizations of my wildest 
dreams ! I want to live, while I live, down to my 
finger-tips. This playing with a dictionary isn't liv- 
ing." 

And yet you are sitting there in the balmy South 
growling because you now prefer to look down the 
avenue of live-oaks rather than read a book ! You 
don't realize how perfectly sane and healthy you 
now are, and that you don't want to read because 
your tired nerves are adjusting themselves to a nor- 
mal way of life, and to the gentle healing of Nature. 
Don't come to me for sympathy ; but go out and 
kill a deer. 



42 



TO JEAN AT TWENTY-TWO 

AFTER long silence, dear Jean, you write to your 
"venerable friend," and ask whether among 
your New-Year resolves you shall include a prohibi- 
tion of all fiction. " At twenty-two," you say, " I 
begin to see that I have been living in a Fool's Para- 
dise, and I am not quite sure that I have not built 
the greater part of it with novels. If my mental fur- 
niture is only a useless lot of illusions, I want to get 
rid of it as soon as possible. If novels are only fairy 
tales for grown-up boys and girls, why should a sen- 
sible woman waste time over them ? You have lived 
thirty years longer than I, and your friends call you 
happy. Come, be frank with me ! " 

I can remember very well, Jean, when I felt just as 
old, restless, and unsatisfied as you do now, and it 
was about thirty years ago. Since then I think I 
have grown a little younger every year, until I have 
become a gray-haired and rotund youth, with a fond- 
ness for chimney-corners and long pipes and after- 
dinner naps — and novels. I'll confess this early, so 
that you may realize what a mistake you make in 
asking my advice. 

43 



People of a certain age know that until a boy gets 
well into the twenties the most interesting thing in the 
world to him is himself. If he falls in love during 
that period, it is only a kind of huge fete to his own 
vanity. He reads fiction to find in it the reflection 
and glorification of his own qualities. But before 
twenty-five he wakens to a knowledge of his Fool's 
Paradise. Then ensues a most unhappy period, when 
he is deeply disgusted with himself and everybody 
else — for, conscious of his own absurdity, as a last sop 
to his egotism, he persuades himself that all the world 
is equally foolish. That is the period of pessimism, 
doubt, heroic resolve, and small accomplishment. 

But one day, ever to be remembered, a little rift 
appears in the clouds, and he sees how fair a world 
the sun is shining upon, and how interesting are the 
people in it. Before he knows it, he is absorbed in 
watching the glorious and pathetic pageant of life, and 
sings with a modern poet : 

" Easier may I tolerate 
My neighbor than myself not hate." 

The more absorbed he becomes in others the less 
he thinks of himself; he has discovered the fountain 
of contentment, and drunk of the waters of perpetual 
youth. This is his last illusion. Men have wrapped 
themselves in it, and at the end of fourscore years have 
lain down to rest in it, with their hearts full of gentle 
thoughts and a great hope, and their memory glad- 
dened with good deeds. 

44 



You are laughing, no doubt, at my sermon, but it 
is the privilege of elderly men to preach. "Yes," 
you say, " but what has it all to do with my question 
about novels? " Well, I confess that I like to come 
around to a text by way of a lot of platitudes, espe- 
cially when I have a listener so patient and so fair as 
you. Do you not see that, if life is the most engag- 
ing study and the chiefest consolation for the living, 
the best novels, which are the work of men pro- 
foundly interested in life, are a force that makes for 
happiness ? 

Your opportunities and mine for seeing much of 
this fascinating show may be sadly limited by health 
or circumstance ; perhaps we have such a part to play 
in the ranks that we march wearily along in a tread- 
mill way, and only see the faces in our own battalion. 
But, in the little halts for rest by the way, around the 
camp-fire, tired though we be, we may read the re- 
ports of our more fortunate comrades who have had a 
place on the reviewing-stand. How it kindles our 
imagination and warms the cockles of our hearts to 
feel that we are a part of the great and onward-mov- 
ing pageant ! We have more respect for the men 
next to us in the ranks after this outlook on the larger 
life. 

So it has happened that the great novelists were 
men of broad sympathy and tolerance, because they 
were ennobled by what their faculty of perception re- 
vealed to them. ■ 



45 



TO A CERTAIN CRITIC 

DEAR DROCH : For ten years you have been 
talking at people about books, and nobody ever 
has a chance to talk back. I don't think it is quite 
fair, and that is why I am writing this letter. It will 
free my mind, though I don't believe you will be 
square enough to print it. 

You must be a rather old man by this time, for you 
have so little comprehension of the tastes of youth. 
You seem to think that we take our reading seriously ; 
that we want to think about a book after we have 
closed its covers ; that we are wildly anxious to get 
at its merits of construction, style, and even moral- 
ity. Bless your gray hairs, how did you get the idea 
that the modern youth takes anything seriously, least 
of all his reading? We have too many amusing 
things to occupy our time to dwell on any one of 
them long enough for what our fathers used to call 
" reflection." Don't you honestly believe that what 
they thought was "reflection " was simply the ordi- 
nary kind of " mooning " which afflicts lazy people? 
What good ever came of it? So tar as I can dis- 
cover it led to absurdly sensitive consciences which 
46 



made them all miserable. Then began the habit of 
" exacting " all kinds of duties from themselves, and 
their neighbors. The wisest of them began on their 
neighbors and spent the little time left on themselves. 
When they ran out of live material for dissection, they 
fell back on "discussing books" — and I fancy it 
was in your manner. 

I am glad I did not live in those days. Aren't 
you just a little sorry for yourself sometimes ? 

But I want to tell you frankly what a book and 
reading really mean to the modern youth. 

We are told on the highest scientific authority that 
we are "very highly developed organisms." We 
are complicated and delicately adjusted machines. 
These machines, under modern conditions, are run 
on a fuel which we call "excitement." You know 
what a rattle and jarring takes place in a big thresh- 
ing-machine when they stop feeding it sheaves of 
grain ? The wise farmer always runs a little straw 
through while the machine is slowing down to save 
the wear and tear. 

Well, we read books on the same principle exactly. 
They arc the straw that slows down the machine 
easily when active pleasure and excitement are not 
at hand. Chaff is just as good as wheat-in-the-sheaf 
for that purpose. 

There js another way of looking at it. You know 

that modern science has robbed us of our illusions 

— from babyhood up to maturity. If you never 

brought yourself up without illusions you can't imag- 

47 



ine how dreary it sometimes is. I did not mean to 
tell you about this — but sometimes the cold, gray 
light in which we see everything is simply heart- 
breaking. Perhaps it is only the nervous reaction 
when the machine is slowing down. It is not so 
many years ago that I went to sleep crying because 
all my dolls were so painfully like real people. It 
was about that time that I first found out that a book 
was a very good substitute for lost illusions, and I 
have been taking the medicine ever since. And you 
critics try your best to rob us of that last refuge for 
our illusions, by picking it to pieces. Don't, please 
don't ! Yours Reproachfully, 

Jean. 



48 



TO A FRIEND STARTING ON A VACATION 

MY DEAR JACK : You write that you have the 
prospect of closing your desk in the office of the 
Daily Whirl for a month, of sweeping the scraps 
and shreds of Associated Press despatches into your 
basket, of writing one more " display head " on a 
" Terrible Loss of Life " — and then for the Wilder- 
ness. For weeks you have dreamed of a bed of spruce 
boughs, of a bark camp with a leaping fire on the side 
that is open toward the lake — and now you are ready 
to make it all something better than "a vision of the 
night." You recall that I once went into camp on 
Cedar Island, and you would like to know more 
about the place. 

My dear fellow, I envy you the prospect of these 
weeks in the Adirondacks, and, if I can help you to 
find the road to the Mysterious Island, I shall surely 
add to your happiness. 

I shall let you find your way to Utica and Boon- 
ville by prosaic steam-cars and time-tables. 

While you are waiting for dinner at Moose River 
you will hear strange tales of the horrors of the Old 
Forge road, in the days before the railroad. Noth- 
49 



ing that an Adirondack guide can invent will quite 
equal the roughness of that road. After five years it is 
as vividly before me as a memory of yesterday. Yet 
for out-and-out amusement the "railroad" beats it. 
You cross a bridge at Moose River, and on the banks 
of the stream are the "terminal facilities" — a shed 
containing the entire rolling-stock of the road — a 
Tom Thumb engine, a short platform car (for pas- 
sengers) with a zinc roof supported by iron pipes, and 
another truck for freight and baggage.* After several 
false starts, which are made without sufficient head- 
way for the first grade, you are off on the strangest 
piece of railway construction you have ever seen. A 
pathway has been cut through the densest forest, and 
the trees on each side are so tall and straight that you 
seem to be at the bottom of a green canyon. The 
road - bed is partly graded with logs piled up in 
squares like a corn-cob house. The rails are wood- 
en scantling, about three by four inches, laid upon 
parallel unhewn logs. Like two huge brown snakes 
they creep through the forest, following the sinu- 
osities of the land, and all its little hills and valleys, 
so that the journey is like a series of toboggan slides. 
You stop in the heart of the forest, and are invited by 
the genial old boy (who is conductor, engineer, and 
fireman, all in one) to help carry wood for the 
engine. You slide and roll over another hill or two, 
and then stop at a trout-brook while the engine takes 
up water through a huge proboscis. By and by, 

* Written before the present trunk line was built. 

5° 



after two hours of adventure, during which you have 
penetrated nine miles of wilderness, you come upon a 
winding stream, known as the North Branch. 

There is awaiting you a boat which is as strange a 
craft as any that ever steamed away to a Mysterious 
Island — fiat bottom, square ends, rounded corners, a 
deck around the smoke-stack, side-wheels driven by 
levers like grasshopper legs, and a fireman whose chief 
duty it is to shove the boat around the ox-bows with 
a pole. 

And what a voyage you have up the North Branch 
in the late afternoon ! You are ascending another 
canyon of green ; alders fringe the banks of the 
stream and dip into it, while above them rise walls of 
spruce and balsam and hemlock and birch — tier 
upon tier of variegated green. The river turns on 
itself like a chain of S's, sometimes almost making a 
figure 8. You reach the end of the journey up the 
enchanted stream about supper-time, and are driven 
in a carryall to the Forge House. From its piazza 
you get a view of the first of the series of lakes and 
ponds known as the Fulton Chain, and right at your 
feet you see a graceful little steamer waiting to carry 
you to the island. 

In the early twilight Captain Jack takes his place 
at the bow — tall and straight, clear blue eyes, curly 
iron-gray hair, a trim uniform — altogether the hand- 
somest man on the Chain, as he surely has been one 
of the best guides for many years. He stands at the 
wheel, with curious little mail-pouches all around him. 
5i 



The steamer zigzags from camp to camp, and at 
every wharf there are men and women with greet- 
ings and chaff for Jack. You seem to steam up the 
lakes between cross-fires of laughter — and now the 
spirit of the woods is upon you, and you feel that here 
is freedom, rest, and good-will. 

It is dark now, and the camp-fires are twinkling all 
along the shores. In the tortuous inlets between the 
lakes you have plucked water-lilies, and raised your 
eyes to find yourself suddenly out of the darkness on 
a broad sheet of water that mirrors every star. You 
glide among the stars, on and on in the keen night- 
air, until in the very midst of the lake you see a black 
mound with lights flitting over it. As you near it a 
voice back of a swinging lantern cries " Hello, Cap- 
tain Jack," and in a minute your boat scrapes the 
wharfs of the Mysterious Island. 

I need not tell you what you will find there — ex- 
cept that it will be a hearty welcome, a spring-bed in 
a bark cottage within a few feet of the lake, a number 
of good guides, a raging hunger, and health and hap- 
piness from day to day. 

Good-speed to you, and a safe return. 



52 



NOVELS THAT EVERYBODY READ 



"LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA" 

THE women in the novels of George Meredith are so 
fascinating that beside them real women some- 
times seem to be the phantoms of the imagination. 
He makes them charm you always by their union of 
feminine qualities with a certain strength at a crisis. 
Almost without exception the women in Meredith's 
novels think, and occasionally act on reason. But 
the sign of their womanliness is that at the last they 
follow the lead of a dominant passion. That is why 
men are fascinated by them. 

The heroine in his romance of "Lord Ormont 
and his Aminta" adds another striking portrait to 
his gallery of fair women. Aminta is not the speaker 
of epigrams, as so many of his great characters are ; 
in this novel that role is reserved for Lady Charlotte, 
a truly wonderful study of an elderly woman of strong 
intellect and persistent, vital affections. But Aminta 
permeates this story with her beauty, her physical 
poise, her clear - sightedness in a great moral crisis. 
She is a woman who rebels against the false position 
in which she is placed, without indulging in hysterics 
or heroics. That is unusual in either fiction or life. 
55 



There is a dignity about her rebellion, such as char- 
acterizes a strong man when he is making up his 
mind ; he does not show his opponent the processes 
by which he is reaching a conclusion. 

The situation developed in the closing chapters of 
the novel is one of unusual complexity. How can 
any one justify a beautiful, true woman in leaving so 
fine a type of man as Lord Ormont — " a chivalrous 
gentleman up to the bounds of his intelligence ! " The 
justification is found in what is fundamental in all 
Meredith's novels — the very root of his strength and 
his optimism. From Fever el to Ormont\\e has never 
ceased to show the divine right of every man and 
woman to seize the one great chance of emotional, 
mental, and spiritual growth that comes of the per- 
fect companionship of a man and woman who love 
each other with all their strength. We are all in the 
hands of a great power which Meredith calls Nature, 
working by laws which at best we can only imperfectly 
comprehend. But one thing we can do — and that is 
follow the dictates of Nature, the great primal impulse 
that forces us on to the best that is in us unless we 
thwart it. Meredith always shows the inevitable 
consequences of thus going against " the laws which 
men have made for their own convenience." He is 
not an Anarchist ; he believes in law, but he also 
believes in the right of real strength and integrity to 
choose out its own path, even if it goes at cross - 
purposes to the law. Whether one accepts his philos- 
ophy or not, one cannot fail to note how he has 
56 



worked out the doctrine of individualism in strict 
accord with the best teachings of contemporary sci- 
ence. 

To many readers this novel will appeal as the latest 
expression of the literary art of the foremost living 
writer of fiction in English. They will make the in- 
evitable comparison with " Feverel," " Harry Rich- 
mond," and " Diana," to see whether at sixty-seven 
the master's hand retains the old-time skill of the great 
artist. Whatever doubts they may have will vanish 
when they reach the chapter entitled " The Marine 
Duet." There the old fervor, the zest of living, the 
lyric quality of love, corruscate and sing and soar in 
language so strong, so musical, so inspiring, that the 
novelist is lost in the poet, and both in the emotion 
which they stimulate. 



57 



"THE MANXMAN" 

A GREAT deal has been said in England against the 
three-volume novel as a work of art, as well as 
against its commercial qualities ; and yet it has been 
responsible for a number of masterpieces in English 
fiction that surely would have failed of force and in- 
tellectual breadth if compressed into a single volume. 
It has no doubt produced great wastes of stupidity and 
dulness, but when you really come across a big fertile 
genius he needs three volumes in which to show his 
pace. You can't exhibit the qualities of an ocean 
" liner " on a frog-pond. There is a lot of satisfaction 
in reading a novel that is long enough to introduce 
you leisurely to a whole community, as well as to 
a pair of lovers. The intellectual " sprinting " that 
we call short stories and novelettes is good enough for 
mere cleverness. But it is boys' work after all, and 
is apt to stop growth of power and fancy. 

When Hall Caine wrote "The Manxman," he 
had the advantage of a big canvas, and strength and 
force enough to fill it. The artistic effect of such a 
book is cumulative. The author can show his versa- 
tility without jarring your nerves by sudden changes 



of style and motive. The finest achievement in 
"The Manxman" is the creation of a lot of minor 
characters and incidents, which, though distinct in 
themselves, are inextricably woven into the great 
catastrophe. A small writer or a small volume would 
have deprived us of these. The detail of Manxland 
is as carefully worked into this story as Miss Wilkins's 
New England characteristics into her tales. It is ap- 
plying the methods of modern realism to the creation 
of a romance. 

The book to which "The Manxman" has been 
compared several times is " The Scarlet Letter " — be- 
cause of a certain correspondence, with a contrast, in 
the motive. But it seems to me that there is far 
more reason to compare it artistically with "Adam 
Bede " — particularly as to the two women who sin — 
Kate and Hetty. There is a verity about these 
women — their rude beauty, their intensity, and their 
infatuations — that adds immensely to the attractions 
of a book which is, no doubt, often a bit repulsive in 
its remorseless pictures of human ignorance and weak- 
ness. 

But the exhibition of the author's skill is in the 
development of the characters of Philip and Pete — a 
wonderful bit of psychology, which is pursued to its 
last analysis. 

In spite of all this, a sensitive reader will feel that 
the novel has failed a little of the highest artistic ef- 
fect. And he will trace the weak spot to the persist- 
ent effort to create scenes which are theatrically 
59 



effective. The writer is always conscious of the 
stage-setting, the distribution of characters, and, as 
it were, the lime-light effects. Admirable as Pete is 
in conception and development, you are persistently 
aware of his wonderful advantages as a part for a ro- 
mantic actor of big voice and handsome presence. 

That sort of talent always commands a good audi- 
ence, but it is not the best audience. Hugo and 
Dickens and Dumas pleased both the literary and 
dramatic audiences — but they are exceptions. You 
don't want to dramatize the novels of George Mere- 
dith or Thackeray. The foot-lights would kill the 
delicate fancy, the flights of imagination, the fascinat- 
ing style that is the immortal part of them. 



60 



"TRILBY" 

" TRILBY " is the beautiful story of three men who 
1 loved each other as brothers, and a woman 
who loved them all with that sort of comradeship 
that one expects from his dearest friend. That is 
why you have heard so many men talking about the 
story ; for men, more than women, have a genius for 
comradeship. But you seldom find it in the modern 
novel, which is given over to the immature love of boys 
and girls, or to an analysis of the meannesses of men 
and women. But Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee 
were bound together by that kind of friendship that 
seldom gets into books ; you can't generalize about 
it or give recipes for it in platitudes. You only know 
that it can't be found among men who are without 
that depth and fidelity in their emotions which is 
called honor. It is not a matter of culture or aesthet- 
ics — for Kipling's " Soldiers Three " exhibit it in as 
admirable a manner as Du Manner's " three guards- 
men of the brush." Pleasure and good-fellowship may 
have had much to do with the beginnings of such com- 
radeship, but, when it is once established, their office 
ends ; for the test of comradeship is the hardships and 
61 



the sorrows that are endured in its name. It is one of 
the permanent things of life that give it continuity. 
The beautiful thing about it all is that it carries with 
it none of those generally accepted obligations that are 
called duties. The whole relationship is so absolutely 
voluntary. 

Now Trilby made her first appeal to these men, be- 
cause she had the faculty of taking a man's views of 
comradeship. She saw what a genuine, unselfish thing- 
it was ; she grasped, what so many women of finer 
opportunities seldom understand — the meaning of 
honor among men. She did not ask them to pity, 
protect, or flatter or pet her (the appeal which most 
women make) — she simply said " Let me be your 
comrade on the same terms that you are each other's 
comrades. I ask no quarter because I am a woman." 
She had lost her honor among women, but she kept 
a man's standard of honor to the uttermost — " to 
think of other people before m)'self, and never to tell 
lies or be afraid." 

But Trilby was a beautiful, magnetic woman, as 
well as a comrade, and so Little Billee and Taffy 
loved her with a great passion. One of them gave 
his life for it ; the other, because he was stronger, 
grew to be a finer, nobler man by reason of it. 

The four characters in this story have become to 
thousands of readers like real people. That is, per- 
haps, the highest tribute that one can pay to Du 
Maurier as a writer. His art has been so fine that 
he has made real for us his visions. The style of 
62 



the narrative is so spontaneous, so unconventional 
that one feels that it is the veracious record of 
real experiences. Du Maurier is not afraid of his 
emotions — they bubble up and sparkle from a clear 
spring. They are not meant for analysis, but for en- 
joyment. That is why people are saying that he 
writes in the manner of the last generation. It is, 
one suspects, the sort of spontaneity that comes from 
hard work. The soul of the arfist felt deeply, saw 
clearly, and then worked away with the instrument 
of language till his vision was made plain to others. 
That is not an easy thing to do ; and the greater the 
artist, the harder the work. For he alone is fully con- 
scious of the imperfections of language at its best to 
image the mind of man. 

As for the hypnotic machinery of the story which 
evolves the two Trilbys, it is easy to overrate its 
originality and importance. As long ago as " The 
Blithedale Romance" of Hawthorne, and as recent- 
ly as the " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" of Stevenson, 
the dramatic possibilities of a dual personality were 
artistically treated in powerful romances. Du Maurier 
uses the device effectively, and in the very last chap- 
ter pushes it to the verge of melodrama, when Trilby 
dying is hypnotized by SvengalV s picture. 

The charm of the story is entirely apart from the 
machinery ; it lies in the region of genuine emotion 
which springs from a zest for living. Notwithstand- 
ing its pathetic ending, the story is profoundly opti- 
mistic — for it breeds faith in human nature, respect 
63 



for individuality, and a manly sympathy for error. 
It is such a lonely world to live in without these 
things — so lonely that when men lose faith in them 
all, they often voluntarily end their lives. 

Stories like " Trilby " help to make it less lonely 
— for they give the emotions something to cling to — 

"A little warmth, a little light 
Of Love's bestowing — and so good-night ! " 



64 



"TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES" 

TO tell a new story in an old manner, to be idyllic 
while unfolding a tragedy, to make the reader 
sympathize with a crime, to write a tale of the pres- 
ent day which is absolutely unconscious of railroads, 
telegraphs, and the worries of modern life — these are 
some of the anomalies in Thomas Hardy's novel, 
" Tess of the D'Urbervilles." 

You are caught in the meshes of the tale before 
you realize it, and are carried to a romantic region. 
The sweet breath of the country is in your nostrils, 
and the winds from the Wessex valleys cool your 
brow. While you read there is no woman in the 
world but Tess, and to you, as to Clare in the light 
of early morning, she is no longer the milkmaid, but 
"a visionary essence of woman — a whole sex con- 
densed into one typical form." 

There is a Greek largeness and simplicity about 
Tess which is very appealing. The nervous sub- 
tleties of the modern woman are unknown to her. 
When she is happy it is an exaltation in which her 
strong body bears her up to a level plain of joy and 
keeps her there. About it there is nothing hysterical. 
65 



She has no imaginary sorrows ; when they come, big, 
real, crushing, she puts her shoulders under them like 
a man, and struggles on — never stopping to whimper, 
or cry at fate. You realize that she is not indifferent, 
but is suffering keenly ; that she thinks deeply as well 
as feels, and that she has an intellectual interest in 
the riddle of life. 

You are never unconscious of the physical suprem- 
acy of 7 ess — the very womanly charm of her which 
accounts for so much that is both sad and happy in 
the story. " You are like an undulating billow 
warmed by the sun," said the infatuated Clare as he 
carried her, "and all this fluff of muslin about you 
is the froth." And that other picture of her, just 
waking from an afternoon sleep : " She was yawning, 
and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had 
been a snake's. She had stretched one arm so high 
above her coiled-up cable of hair that he could see its 
delicacy above the sunburn ; her face was flushed with 
sleep, and her eyelids hung heavy over their pupils. 
It was a moment when a woman is more incarnate 
than at any other time." 

Indeed, in the first four books of this novel it is 
hard to find a flaw. They are written in the won- 
derfully melodious English of which Hardy has long 
been an acknowledged master ; the pastoral atmo- 
sphere saturates them ; landscape after landscape 
springs into view and dissolves with the shifting of 
the breeze; and, above all, men and women live in 
this atmosphere and breathe the enchanted air. So 
66 



far it is a beautiful romantic love-story, touching the 
deepest passions but permitting them to work out 
their own salvation. 

Then, in what seems to be sheer perversity, the 
cloud of melodrama settles over the book. At one 
bound you are transported from the bracing air of 
the Wessex meadows to the stuffy atmosphere of a 
modern theatre. You can almost hear the shifting of 
the scenery, the whistle of the stage machinist, and 
see the changing color of the lights. The whole 
business of the tragedy is theatrical and unreal ; the 
murder, the last happy night when Tcss slept on the 
altar of the Druids, and the final scene of the black 
flag rising over the prison are cleverly devised stage 
pictures which would make the fortune of a different 
type of novel, but are utterly incongruous here. 

The culmination of it all is a needless bit of cruelty. 
The reader closes the book with the impression that 
he has been defrauded of his sympathies, and he half- 
believes that the Home Secretary pardoned Tcss at 
the last minute. 



67 



"THE PRISONER OF ZENDA " 

THE wave of romance which has made the books of 
Stanley J, Weyman popular, has carried forward 
" The Prisoner of Zenda," by Anthony Hope (Haw- 
kins). Most boys play at "being king," and this 
story carries on the play. Not only does the young 
Englishman play at being king, but he makes love to 
the real king's best girl. If there is anything more 
fascinating in romance than the king business, it is 
making love to a princess without any responsibility 
to marry her. Indeed, in the whole story the young 
Englishman has the best of the real king all the time. 
Of course he has to kill a few people now and then, 
but that is simply rare sport for a healthy Englishman. 

Moreover, this story has lots of other stage proper- 
ties of the old-fashioned sort. There is an unhealthy 
moat, and a drawbridge that creaks on its hinges, and 
a dungeon cell. In the human way, also, it is well 
supplied with gentlemanly assassins, treacherous con- 
fidential servants, and, better than all else, a beau- 
tiful but wicked woman, who loves the villain, but 
saves the life of his enemy. 

What more can the children of the decade, who are 
63 



saturated with reality, ask for — unless it be a fairy 
godmother ? There is a great deal to be said for fairy 
godmothers in a story. They make it easier for the 
novelist when he gets the plot tied into knots. The 
beautiful but wicked siren fills the part in a way in 
this tale, though she has her limitations. But a fairy 
godmother does not bother with the ordinary rules of 
the game. That is why we need to have her restored 
to full standing in the new school of old romance. 

But, gentlemen of the new school, whatever you 
leave out of your stories, give us plenty of blood ! 
Not ordinary blood spilt in brutal murders — we get 
enough of that in the newspapers — but fine blue blood 
shed in a gentlemanly way with plenty of " gadzooks ' ' 
and " by my halidom " to accompany it. We have 
a preference for rapiers and broadswords as the 
weapons, because the reporters have made us suspect 
that a " Smith & Wesson 32 calibre" is a rather 
vulgar weapon. 

We have nothing but praise for the way in which 
the hero of this story kills men. When it has to be 
done he makes clean work of it — even when he is 
compelled to run a knife into the man who is asleep 
in a boat. 

We have only one fault to find with him — he ought 
to have run off with the beautiful princess. When he 
restored the real king to his kingdom he satisfied the 
moralities enough. The laws of romance demand 
that a genuine hero should be devilish enough to run 
away with a beautiful woman when he has the chance. 
6q 



This is the only indication in the book that the mod- 
ern Englishman has fallen away from the standard of 
the middle ages. 

In the meantime, where is the American School of 
Romance? A contemporary cynic says that it is 
attending afternoon teas and kettledrums ! 



70 



"SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT" 

THERE is something more satisfactory in the suc- 
cess of Miss Beatrice Harraclen's stories, " Ships 
that Pass in the Night," and "In Varying Moods" 
than in tales of specious cleverness like " Dodo," for, 
at any rate, they are in dead earnest about a few- 
things of some significance. Moreover, they are writ- 
ten with considerable respect for the English lan- 
guage as a vehicle for thought transference, and with 
a commendable knowledge of its best traditions. The 
style has an even, often a glittering edge on it, that 
cuts into the core of things, straight and clean. That 
is why people of small literary capability are pleased 
with the stories (they are so easily understood), and, 
at the same time people of some fastidiousness read 
them without shrugging their shoulders. 

But what counts for the stories, more than all else, 
is the sense of reality which they convey. No 
amount of work or knowledge can give this ; a writer 
either has the image-creating power, or he has not. 
If he has he will be read, even though he violates 
most of the laws of the English language, and all of 
the Ten Commandments. If the characters have 
7i 



reality, the reader will follow them, good or bad, to 
the end of the story. As Wharton says in " Mar- 
cella," you get the thrill from them and that is what 
most people are living for. 

For example take the longest story in "In Varying 
Moods " — the first few pages domesticate the reader 
comfortably at the Green Dragon. He could find 
it without a map, and would recognize Mrs. Ben- 
bow at the door. That is a literary accomplishment 
of some importance at a time when many novels leave 
their characters in a haze at the very last chapter — 
the writers having expended most of their energy on 
the epigrams or social problems of the book, while 
the characters shifted for themselves. 

But the thing which seems all wrong about Miss 
Harraden's stories is the attitude of the author and 
her people toward the often amusing spectacle which 
is called living. Almost without exception her stories 
end in death or heart-breaking renunciation. True, 
there is a certain stoicism about it all, which seems 
to say, " Of course, I am not making much fuss 
about this, but, ye gods, how I suffer ! " If you are 
the right kind of a reader you-are expected to aid in 
the silent suffering yourself. That is part of the thrill 
for which you paid. 

But if you are a man or woman with the blood of 
health in your heart, you will say, after a little spasm 
of silent suffering, " How much better I should have 
felt if I had played two sets of tennis or taken a ten- 
mile ride ! Some day, perhaps, I'll have to meet 
72 



the real thing, and this simulation of it won't make 
me any braver." Or, maybe, " I endured tenfold 
these sorrows once myself, and this book reopens the 
old wound. Why did I read it? " 

Of course if you are one of the melancholy contin- 
gent who make a profession out of sorrow (your own 
and other people's), we have nothing to say. " Ships 
that Pass in the Night " is just what you want ; you'll 
get your own particular kind of thrill out of it, and 
plenty out of it. 

But after you've read it, walk out on the hills at 
sunset, and let the breeze from off the wheat-fields 
play around your face, and take a deep breath when 
it has the perfume of clover in it ; then watch the 
color glowing in the sky, and thank great nature that 
you are alive, and part of it all. 



73 



"KATHARINE LAUDERDALE" 

THE easiest thing to say about an author who writes 
a great deal is that his latest book is not the 
equal of certain of his previous works ; the particular 
one which a reader or critic selects for this com- 
parison is always the book which happens to have 
left the most vivid impression on his mind. Now a 
vivid impression depends on so many things — on 
health for instance, on the pleasant surroundings, on 
the hour of the day, or the weather. That is why 
such comparisons are usually worthless. What does 
your opinion that " Mr. Isaacs " is a far better novel 
than "Katharine Lauderdale" amount to, when 
your friends know that in the ten years between the 
two you have not only grown older, but have lost 
your dearly beloved wife, or failed in your political 
ambition, or developed a persistent gout in your left 
foot? 

Neither is it of any more significance for the writer 
to say that for him " Katharine " is a far better novel 
than " Mr. Isaacs " or any other novel Mr. Crawford 
ever wrote — except perhaps " Saracinesca" and 
"The Tale of a Lonely Parish"— just because the 
74 



sun is shining when he writes after a week of snow 
and rain, and the birds are chirping in the square, 
and a bit of blue sky shows tremulously over the 
cornice across the street. The only safe thing, it 
seems, in judging of books, is to know why you like 
or dislike them, and leave comparisons alone. 

You like "Katharine Lauderdale" no doubt be- 
cause it is so thoroughly a modern story — and yet 
conscious of a dignified past, which is an inseparable 
part of the development of any society, even New 
York society. The valuable thing in Mr. Crawford's 
writing a New York story is that he has been in that 
city enough at long intervals really to see things at 
first hand, and yet he has been away so much in other 
great cities that he does not put things in that exag- 
gerated perspective that in novels is called "provin- 
cialism." For a man may spend his whole life in a 
great city, and see the best that it affords, and yet be 
provincial in his judgments. No doubt there are 
many things in " Katharine " which real New 
Yorkers consider unessential or not in accord with 
the reality. There are also, no doubt, omissions of 
many things which New York considers the very 
essence of itself. But to many readers the very de- 
tachment of Mr. Crawford's view will be its chief 
charm. 

"Katharine" is, moreover, charming for its dia- 
logue, which is bright without being affected, crisp 
without being cynical. The people in the book pre- 
serve a reasonable dignity in their conversations with 
75 



each other, and yet it is not " stage dignity," which 
so many novelists consider the real thing. 

The achievement of the book, however, which will 
best stand all moods and weathers, is the admirable 
creation and characterization of the whole Lauderdale 
family — their evolution and present social dependen- 
cies. It is the first time in American fiction that any 
such breadth of view has shown itself in the study of 
our social framework. It suggests the opportunity 
for many other novels as good as this one. Mr. 
Crawford has shown very clearly that there is bet- 
ter material for stories of American life than the love 
agonies of detached young men and women, or the 
elaborately bad English of uninteresting people, which 
we call " dialect." 

The story of " Katharine " is continued in " The 
Ralstons," a very long novel which succeeds in hold- 
ing your attention in spite of an unusual number of 
digressions that seem to delay the plot. 

It is not an agreeable story — the bickerings of the 
Lauderdale family being frequent and exceedingly 
irritating. But it is something of a task to show 
the strange results of an inherited family temper 
working in different personalities. There is a great 
deal of truth in this presentation of a strong fam- 
ily trait — one of the kind which makes the mem- 
bers of the family charming people to outsiders, 
but very annoying to each other. They have a 
keen appreciation of each other's virtues, but when 
brought together their eccentricities clash. They 
76 



know it is foolish, but for their lives they cannot 
change it. 

One of the best characters that the author has ever 
drawn is the old millionaire, Robert Lauderdale— -a 
portrait of great strength, and unusual pathos of a 
virile kind. The chapters describing his illness and 
death are the best in the book— full of dignity and 
dramatic force. 



77 



THE "JUNGLE BOOK" 

THE best book to write about is one that the critic 
has read with real enthusiasm ; for then some of 
his enthusiasm, no matter how ill-natured he is, will 
creep into what he writes, and some one will read a 
stimulating book by reason of it. To that extent a 
critic may be, occasionally, a public benefactor. 
And that is why " The Jungle Book," by Rudyard 
Kipling, demands recognition. Kipling is so easily 
king among his fellows in a certain kind of narrative 
fiction, and has been so much praised that it is diffi- 
cult to say anything new about him. But he has 
the astounding habit of always doing some entirely 
new thing in a strikingly original way. Therefore, 
even commonplace readers are moved to say new 
things about him. 

Surely there is no prototype for " The Jungle 
Book " in either juvenile or grown-up literature. The 
nearest thing to it in English is " Uncle Remus," 
and the similarity goes no farther than the extraordi- 
nary way in which both Harris and Kipling get into 
the personality of animals and make them real and 
individual for the reader. 

78 



The book was in the main written for children, 
and one can imagine that a bright child would be fas- 
cinated with parts of it, even though the strange and 
uncouth words might be gibberish to him. For a 
child and a negro have an insatiable appetite for 
words with a big or curious sound. The prime con- 
dition is that they must suggest something to his 
imagination. There must be something wrong with 
a boy who would not sit up late to hear " Rikki- 
Tikki-Tavi " read to him ; for the daring little mon- 
goose who is the hero of the tale, possesses most of 
the virtues that a boy worships — fidelity to his chum, 
cunning in schemes to outwit his enemy, and blood- 
thirstiness in the presence of the foe. 

But one fancies that grown-up boys, from twenty- 
five to sixty, will get most fun out of " The Jungle 
Book." And if they happen to know a little about 
the art of writing, their pleasure will be increased. 
For the book has some writing in it to make artists in 
the business jealous ; for example, the night ride of 
little Tomai on the big elephant to the great elephant 
dance in the jungle. It is hard to find in Kipling a 
more weird or effective piece of description — the very 
soul of the jungle seems to be caught in it, and, for 
the time, you are part of an unknown world. 

Of equal imaginative force is the story of " The 
White Seal " — perhaps the best story in the volume. 
It is a complete refutation of the charge that when 
Kipling leaves India he is out of his element, and his 
work falls off. This tale moves about in the depths 

79 



of the sea, from the Arctic regions to the equator — and 
the reader is impressed with the same sense of reality 
that held him in the Indian jungle. 

The book contains several incidental poems that 
perhaps meant something to little Mowgli, the wolf- 
child, but will puzzle the intellect of any one not 
educated by the Seeonee Pack. But even when they 
are obscure, you have a clear sense of the fact that 
nobody other than Kipling could have written them. 
Whatever he does he is always Kipling — and in dead 
earnest about his work. 



So 



" PEMBROKE " 

IT is very easy to speak in unreserved praise of the 
technical ability in Miss Wilkins's novel " Pem- 
broke." She never hesitates in conveying the im- 
pression of a scene or a situation as it is present to her 
mental vision ; there it is, all set down on the page 
in direct, simple sentences that follow each other with 
the precision of soldiers on parade. Her style goes 
clipping and clicking its way through the pages like a 
well-geared and sharpened reaper through a field of 
wheat. Nothing is left for the reader's imagination, 
not even the gleanings. He simply sits on the fence 
and sees this efficient literary machine cut a broad 
swath through reality, bind it in orderly sheaves, and 
set them in a row. He may not like the grain, but 
there is nothing but admiration in his soul for the 
machine that is doing the work. 

As for ' ' Pembroke ' ' itself — the obvious thing is 
to compare it with " Cranford." It conveys a simi- 
lar sense of the reality of an insignificant village — 
and the unreality, and, moreover, unimportance of the 
rest of the world. While you are reading " Pem- 
broke," there is no other standard of civilization or 
81 



morality in your mind than Pembroke's. A writer of 
fiction can go no farther than that in the line of verity. 

Moreover, with all its simplicity of life and char- 
acter, the novel contains three or four scenes of real 
dramatic intensity — situations evolved as naturally as 
in life, and full of pathos and tragedy. With admir- 
able restraint in language, these scenes are set down 
without a touch of the melodramatic. Pre-eminent 
among them are the flight of Rebecca, the journey of 
Sylvia to the poordiouse, and the death of Ephraim. 
There is a severity, a sternness, an inevitableness in 
all these chronicles that suggest the Hebraic proto- 
types on which the old New England character was 
modelled. 

There are two or three touches of moral allegory in 
the novel (like the veil over the face of Sylvia, and 
the imaginary crook in the back of Barney) that 
remind one of the methods of the great romancer 
who wrote "The Minister's Black Veil." This is a 
line of comparison which the most skilful of modern 
writers might hesitate to indicate. 

The reader, not a New Englander, will close the 
book with admiration for the writer's skill, but with 
considerable satisfaction that his youth was not spent 
in a New England village. It is doubtful whether 
more disagreeable people were ever gathered in a 
single novel (outside of " Wuthering Heights ") than 
in "Pembroke." The first hundred pages of the 
book are a record of family bickering and quarrels in 
three households — in which brothers and sisters, and 
82 



mothers and fathers are arrayed against each other in 
the name of the Lord. We have been told in New 
England-made histories that it is from homes like 
these that the strong men, the " makers of the Repub- 
lic," in politics, literature, and art, have sprung. 

One can imagine Colonel Carter saying, after read- 
ing "Pembroke," "By gad, sah, we may not be 
makahs of the Republic, sah, but we know how to 
live respectably, affectionately, and honorably with 
our own people ! ' ' 



83 



"DAVID BALFOUR" 

IT is a very trying test of the growth and perform- 
ance of a writer when he publishes the sequel to 
a great success after a long interval. Robert Louis 
Stevenson set up such a standard for judgment when 
he published the sequel to "Kidnapped" — the 
memoirs and adventures of "David Balfour." The 
critical reader may hold himself in this attitude of 
judgment for the first hundred pages of " David Bal- 
four." For that space he will admire chiefly the ad- 
mirable technic of the novel. He will marvel most 
of all, perhaps, at the intellectual dexterity with which 
Stevenson put himself, body and soul, into the Scot- 
land of 1 75 1, and then proceeded, with the ease of an 
eighteenth-century Scotchman, to write four or five 
Scotch dialects in the same chapter — Highland and 
Lowland, chief and peasant, Fife and Lothian — each 
differing from the other by some gradations of pro- 
nunciation, some words and phrases peculiar to the 
class or clan. The finest manifestation of this ac- 
complishment is the ease and perfect naturalness with 
which Balfour, for example, changes his mode of 
speech to suit the character he is addressing — and, 
84 



little by little, all the while reveals the steps of his 
own development, from an awkward village boy to a 
man of the world, with some social graces. Whether 
or not this linguistic jugglery was the fruit of a 
scholar's knowledge of the period, or a feat of the 
imagination, can only concern one or two learned 
Scots at the most. For the critical reader it is 
enough to feel that Stevenson did a very difficult 
thing, with an air of truth and reality which needed 
no further justification. 

After the first hundred pages all these questions of 
technic and literary skill are swept out of sight by the 
glamour of the romance. From there to the end it is 
Catriona and David, Alan Brcck and James More 
who are the real and pertinent things to you. Catri- 
ona is henceforth one of the charming and lovable 
women you are glad to have known. She refutes for 
all time the charge that the author could not create a 
womanly woman. Her charm is the directness and 
fidelity of her affection ; but the spice is her nimble 
Scotch temper, which flames up like burning heather 
in a drought, and then glows long with the warmth 
of it, like smouldering peat. "There's just the two 
sets of weemenfolk," says Alan Breek, "them that 
would sejl theer coats for ye, and them that never look 
the road ye're on. That's a' that there is to women." 
And that's a big part of Catriona, but not all, Alan 
my braw lad ; there is an amazing amount of Scotch 
pride in her which makes her own personal inde- 
pendence (what men call honor) of more account to 
S5 



her than the love of David. She would not have 
his love unless it came to her without a shade of false 
motive. 

Alan comes nearer all the truth in summing up the 
character of David 'Balfour — " He's no very bonnie, 
my dear, but he's leal to them he loves." 

The tendency of recent writing has been to put 
loyalty to an abstract principle ahead of personal 
loyalty. We have been making heroes of men who 
renounce family and friends for the sake of a creed. 
This is, no doubt, a great force for progress, but one 
must confess that there never was a finer cloak for 
hypocrisy, treachery, and selfishness than this same 
" loyalty to a principle." Oh, the friends and homes 
that have been sacrificed to feed the vanity of it ! It's 
a fine thing to put on a tombstone that a man was 
loyal to his principles ; but in his heart of hearts a 
decent man would rather have it written of himself, 
living or dead — " He's leal to them he loves." 



86 



THE LITERARY PARTITION OF SCOTLAND 



THE LITERARY PARTITION OF SCOTLAND 

IN the present partition of Scotland for literary pur- 
poses among fiction writers, the following amicable 
allotment of territory seems to have been agreed upon : 
Forfarshire to Barrie, Inverness and Ross to William 
Black, Fife to Annie Swan and the author of " Barn- 
craig," Perthshire to Ian Maclaren, and old Galloway 
to S. R. Crockett. So long as each keeps to his own 
territory these brethren dwell together in unity and 
unstintedly praise each other's books. Instead of the 
old feuds of the clans, these modern chieftains seem 
to have formed a Literary Trust for Scotland which 
runs things to suit itself and absorbs the bulk of the 
profits in the business of making marketable tales. As 
they have a monopoly of the brains adapted for that 
kind of work, there is no particular reason why they 
should not have the emoluments. 

But some of these days a venturesome young Scot, 
who has been fighting his way through Edinburgh 
University on sixpence a day, will put on his bon- 
net and kilt, gird on his dagger and slip a skene-dhu 
into his stocking. Then he will sally forth into the 
literary territory of one of the present chieftains, and 
8 9 



there will be as pretty a fight in the literary way as 
has been seen since the old days of Christopher North. 
In the meantime, Americans will buy unlimited 
quantities of the books of chieftains and usurpers, and, 
with their usual indifference, will become more famil- 
iar with the traditions, history, and dialects of a coun- 
try three thousand miles away than with their own 
States. And they are little to blame for it, because 
many of our own writers, as soon as they become tol- 
erably adept in the business, are apt to go abroad and 
spend the rest of their days " discovering " European 
types and writing about them. The American reader, 
with his usual acuteness, prefers the real foreign novel 
to an imitation of it by one of his countrymen ; and 
he is about right in his preference. 



90 



J. M. BARRIE 

JM. BARRIE is one of the group of Scots who 
. are writing so much of the good poetry, essays, 
and fiction which come from over the sea. Lang, 
MacDonald, Black, Buchanan are his older fellow- 
countrymen, each with a style of his own — for what- 
ever else a Scot may be in his writings, he is usually 
a stylist. He is rather a man of feeling, of enthusi- 
asm, than of remarkable intellectual culture — and it 
is feeling that gives individuality to style. 

To get at what is best in Barrie's earlier work one 
must read "A Window in Thrums" and " Auld 
Licht Idylls " — a series of sketches, lightly caught to- 
gether by the reappearance of the same characters 
from time to time, and all of them centred in the 
Scotch village of Thrums — "a handful of houses 
jumbled together in a cup," where twenty years ago 
nearly every man was a weaver, working out his life 
over a handloom. They were a solemn people to 
whom the most serious thing in life was the Kirk, 
and the only social division, the impassable moral 
barriers that divided Auld Lichts from Free Kirks 
and U. Ps. 

9* 



The quality which Mr. Barrie puts into his sketches 
of this quaint old village life is entire absorption in 
it. For him and for his reader there is no other 
place, no other standard of judgment than Thrums. 
It is his aloofness from any larger interests that makes 
Thrums so real. You are living with him in the house 
at the top of the brae and see the world through Jess' s 
window. It is a gray world, narrow and sad and 
filled with poverty. But there is a certain moral ele- 
vation about the people, a brave attitude toward the 
worst that life can bring, which gives distinction to 
them. Poverty or occupation has nothing to do with 
the essential refinement of a family like Jess and 
Hendry and Lecby. Their heart-breaking affection 
for each other, which conceals itself behind a stolid 
manner, their consideration in little things, their de- 
termination to endure cheerfully — these are the qual- 
ities which would make any station in life digni- 
fied. 

It would be hard to choose between the pathos and 
humor of these books — for each is so simple, direct, 
and natural. They chase each other from page to 
page, treading on each other's heels. You are never 
conscious that the author is playing with your feelings 
— for all that happens is so necessary. 

This does not imply that the sketches are uniformly 
successful ; for they may be colorless like " Davit 
Lunan's Political Reminiscences," or, perhaps, too 
farcical, like the " Auld Lichts in Arms." 

But at their worst, the charm of the homely style, 
92 



with its Gaelic idioms giving it both strength and mel- 
ody, will carry the reader through them with delight. 

Barrie's " My Lady Nicotine " is a book that sug- 
gests but is very unlike " The Reveries of a Bach- 
elor." The former is urban ; the latter is provincial. 
A brier pipe filled with Arcadia Mixture starts the 
reveries in the one ; a hearth fire, in the other. 

The five bachelors in " My Lady Nicotine " seem 
to be utterly dissimilar in tastes and feelings — and 
have only one bond of union, their common love for 
the famous Arcadia Mixture. The solemnity with 
which they treat their pipes ; their assured superiority 
to everybody outside of the circle which knows and ap- 
preciates that mysterious brand of tobacco ; the sen- 
timental selfishness of their bachelor existence, and 
the delicate humor with which the quiet episodes are 
narrated — these are some of the charming qualities of 
the book. 

But the crowning humor of it is that the story is 
told by one of their number, who boldly announces in 
the first chapter that he has married, and that his wife 
has won hi m from his pipe and his comrades. He cheap- 
ly moralizes on their enslavement, and then in reveries 
calls up the happy days when he smoked with them. 

The closing chapter is a most subtile piece of writ- 
ing. The narrator praises his constancy to his prom- 
ise never to smoke again, and adds: "I have not 
even any craving for the Arcadia now, though it is a 
tobacco that should only be smoked by our greatest 
93 



men." Then he confesses that when his wife is 
asleep and all the house is still, he sits with his empty 
brier in his mouth, and listens to the taps of a pipe in 
the hands of a smoker (whom he has never seen) on 
the other side of the wall. " When the man through 
the wall lights up I put my cold pipe in my mouth 
and we have a quiet hour together. ' ' 

Barrie's most ambitious work is, of course, his 
novel, " The Little Minister." The style is flexible, 
penetrating, rough but melodious — the product of an 
early saturation with Burns, the Bible, and Rous's 
version of the Psalms. There are in it also touches 
of contemporary literary godfathers, for you may 
catch a trace of Stevenson with his " love of lovely 
words " in Barrie's choice of names like Windyghoul 
and Glen Quharity ; and from no other man than 
George Meredith could he have learned so well the 
art of mingling an intense emotional crisis with what 
is unusual and uncanny in nature — like the great rain- 
storm through which the culmination of this story 
moves. You are made to see the Windyghoul and 
the Glen through the emotions of the actors in the 
drama, and not as an artist sees a landscape with an 
eye for color and detail and composition. 

In the way of character also you catch a hint of 
Meredith's methods; you inevitably think of Kiomi, 
the gypsy girl, in " Harry Richmond," when The 
Egyptian of this story appears. But these things are 
the faintest echoes — for of all men Barrie is original. 
94 



His Tammas Whamond is a creation who might be 
admitted to illustrious companionship with the great 
Mulvaney — and while Mulvaney would brag of the 
time when he was " a sergeant and a divil of a man," 
Whamond would wrap himself up in the " mantle of 
chief elder o' the Kirk." 

It is more in the minor characters than the prin- 
cipals that the quality of the story is shown. You 
are made to know these people, who come and go 
without evident reason, as you would know them if 
you lived in the village of Thrums and saw them every 
Sabbath in the Auld Licht Kirk. You begin to judge 
the Little Minister by their standard, and develop a 
small prejudice against the U. Ps. and the Free Kirk. 

What you will oftenest recall with pleasure is the 
delicious humor of certain episodes — like Waster 
Lunny frantically searching for the book of Ezra ; or 
piper Campbell's mighty wrath when he was ordered 
by the Earl to play the " Bonny House o' Airlie " — 
the tune which the Ogilvys used to hurl at the clan 
Campbell ; or The Egyptian' s first meeting with the 
Little Minister, and how she outwitted him. 

Indeed the book must be judged rather as a series of 
character sketches (like "A Window in Thrums" 
and the "Auld Licht Idylls") than as a full-fledged 
novel. It is a charming piece of work, interesting 
from first to last, but lacking in unity. And there 
is the gentle spirit of Margaret which pervades the 
book — "one whose nature was not complex, but 
most simple, as if God had told her only to be good." 
95 



S. R. CROCKETT 

OF all the morbid novels that are now being writ- 
ten and read there is not a single one coming 
from this group of clever Scotchmen. Therefore 
you may read "The Raiders," by S. R. Crockett, 
with confidence that you will not think worse of your 
race when you have finished it. It is like a strong, 
fresh breeze from the heathery hills, with the bracing 
touch of salt water clinging to it. There is a deal of 
blood and fighting in it — and you can almost take it 
as an axiom that the more pious the origin of a Scotch 
writer the more gore will you find in his novels. It 
is probable that the long chapters from the Old Tes- 
tament committed to memory in boyhood give their 
minds a turn toward fighting and conflict. And 
then, too, there is atavism to account for it — the 
reappearance in the third or fourth generation of the 
old ways, when the clans chased each other like 
hounds and only the strong men survived. It was 
very brutal no doubt, but, physiologically speaking, 
it was a good way to rid a whole race of weaklings. 

A very good argument could be made by any man 
(not a Scotchman) to prove that there is nothing 
elevating in literature that devotes itself to the brutal 
96 



struggles of strong men with each other; that a 
prize-fight is a prize-fight, whether it is described 
by Robert Louis Stevenson or the New York World. 
There is no doubt a touch of barbarism in it, but 
it stirs your blood in the right way. After you have 
read the fight on the Brig of Dee in " The Raiders," 
you'll have no stomach for " The Yellow Aster " or 
" Dodo." Between barbarism and a jaundiced soul, 
the sane man will choose barbarism every time. 

All of which does not admit, for an instant, that 
" The Raiders " is barbaric. It is really elevated in 
sentiment and motive. The love of the Laird of 
Rathan and May Mischief is poetic, and strong as 
well. The steadfastness of Silver Sand is real hero- 
ism. And so throughout the book, the sentiments 
and motives are vigorous and full of health. It is 
easy to trace the literary ancestry of the book. The 
author himself has frankly paid homage to Stevenson. 
A clever man recently said that " The Raiders " was 
the offspring of Alan Breck and Lorna Boone, which 
surely indicates its salient qualities. At the same 
time it sets the standard of judgment very high, and 
the story falls short in some particulars. For one 
thing, the tale often flounders around in pages of 
wordy descriptions which lead to nothing. 

The archaisms have something to do with this 
effect. Not only is it Scotch, and Galloway Scotch 
at that, but it is the language of the early part of the 
eighteenth century. The author has evidently spared 
no pains to be correct in his dialect. He must be 
97 



credited with a considerable intellectual accomplish- 
ment, but the reader who is not a philologist will long 
for less of the archaic and more good English. 

But with it all one's fancy is refreshed by reading 
the story, and there is a touch of color left in one's 
memory that was never there before. 

Another of Mr. Crockett's novels, " Mad Sir 
Uchtred of the Hills," keeps close to the Galloway 
hills and the days of the Covenanters. 

It isn't a pleasant tale, and no amount of archaic 
Scotch, with a sprinkling of psalm-singing and long 
prayers, can seriously interest a reader in a mad, un- 
kempt, naked, and dirty old chief who is playing Ne- 
buchadnezzar on the hills, while his brother makes 
love to his wife at home. 

The one touch of beauty in the story is the faithful 
Philippa with her children — all of them shadowy 
sketches, leaving the tale without that leaven of idyllic 
love which softened the harshness of " The Raiders." 

The reaction from " prettiness " in writing is a 
good thing ; but this is not a barbarous age, and a 
great deal can be said for the doctrine of the late 
Walter Pater as to the supremacy of beauty in life and 
art. Surely it ought to count for a good deal in the 
literary art ! 

It is probable that some of the success of Mr. 
Crockett is clue to the fact that his books and fa- 
vorite characters do not offend against the accepted 
standards of morality as handed down from genera- 
98 



tion to generation of decent people. Moreover, they 
actually approve of these standards heartily, and 
bring to severe punishment those who go against 
them. Such an attitude in a fiction-writer would not 
have attracted attention a k\v years ago — because it 
was taken for granted that he approved of such things 
before he went into the business. 

But some daring Englishman (probably George 
Moore, first of all), took the other tack, achieved 
notoriety, and, for three or four years since, the man 
or woman who wrote a book to upset some accepted 
standard was pretty sure of success. 

In a literary period pretty generally occupied with 
kicking over the traces, a good, steady-going Scotch 
dominie, with considerable of the preacher's knack 
at parables, has achieved a success which seems out of 
proportion to his literary output. He has written, 
as we have said, one book of force and originality — 
"The Raiders" — and three or four other studies of 
Galloway character that are put into attractive Eng- 
lish interlarded with barbaric Scotch dialect. But 
there is nothing in all this to justify the opinion that 
the sacred fire that went out in Samoa is rekindled 
upon his hearth. 

Indeed, his recent story, " The Play Actress," is a 
ludicrous illustration of what may result from a pro- 
vincial minister's attempting to prove that he is a 
literary man of broad equipment, " in touch with the 
world," by writing a story in which glimpses are given 
of the wickedness of London. 
99 



IAN MACLAREN 

RNEW Scotch writer has come out of Perthshire 
to enter the quaint town of Drumtochty into 
competition with Thrums as a centre of literary in- 
terest. In "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush" Ian 
Maclaren has done some very good writing of the 
simple, direct sort that comes natural to Scotchmen. 
The old, quaint types are also in its pages — men and 
women with hard, strong faces, under which are play- 
ing deep feeling and imagination. They are good 
people to know in either books or real life, though 
they are often rather trying (in both places), by reason 
of their tremendous respect for their own personality 
and persistent undervaluing of the personality of al- 
ien people. One may sincerely praise Mr. Maclaren 
for his very genuine grasp of the things that make 
character in simple folks, and for the strong, expres- 
sive English in which he sets down his impressions. 
He shows a true sense of the literary value of common 
things in a lack of exaggeration and in utter oblivi- 
ousness to any other standard of life or manners than 
that of Drumtochty. One is inclined to think that 
ioo 



what he imagines to be real pathos is sometimes rather 
forced, and his heroism, a kind of inevitable obstinacy. 
But the sketch of the village doctor is of great force 
and naturalness. It is one of the best stories of Scotch 
humble life of recent years. 



IOI 



FRIENDS IN ARCADY 



CHARLES DANA GIBSON 

FOR a good many years the writer has furnished 
articles to be set in type and used as frames 
around the drawings of C. D. Gibson. When he 
has constructed a paragraph that filled his heart with 
joy and vanity, it has been his luck to open next 
week's Life and find that a Gibson Girl had put her 
dainty foot right through the middle of it. There 
has been no subject in contemporary literature upon 
which the present writer has attempted to shed light 
that the Gibson Girl has not intruded some part of her 
anatomy or finery into it. She has done it very grace- 
fully and with a ravishing smile; but even that won't 
smooth out the creases in a writer's vanity when he 
finds his choicest sentences cut in two by a picture. 

At last a day of reckoning and revenge has arrived. 
Mine enemy has published a book — '• Drawings by 
Charles Dana Gibson." 

The trouble with revenge for which one has waited 
a long time is that it isn't sweet. The edge is off 
the grievance, and one has endured it so long that it 
takes the guise of a blessing. So it happens that I 
have come to look upon the Gibson Girl as my friend. 
I am positive that she has broken up more stupid 
i°5 



paragraphs than bright ones — for all of which I am 
duly thankful. 

Indeed, the Gibson Girl, as she appears in this 
volume, is a charmer to melt the heart of any crusty 
bachelor. Even my friend the cynical Adrian says 
that she is " no clothes' horse." She is dressed a la 
mode to be sure, but she has a pair of shoulders under 
her coat that can drive an oar through the water or 
keep a hunter down to his work. And her neck rises 
out of her gown as though it were attached to some- 
thing substantial. Then she looks square at you with 
intelligent eyes that hide a touch of mischief lurking 
in their corners. She is healthy and brave and inde- 
pendent and well-bred ; she can dance as well as she 
can run a Boys' Club, and she knows as much about 
golf as French and German. She goes to church on 
Sundays, recites the Ten Commandments, and reads 
Life every Tuesday. That is the Girl as I know 
her. She is probably different to you. At any rate 
you will find her somewhere in this volume. You 
can't miss it ; if you own this book you'll have a 
picture of your ideal girl. 

For Gibson has a way of adopting all nice girls 
into his family. You don't realize what a large fam- 
ily he has until you get them all together in this 
book. There is a proud and haughty beauty among 
them that only a millionaire, with a superb education 
in addition to his bank account, would dare propose 
to. And then there is a pleasant-faced, black-eyed 
fascinator, who would not mind living in a cheap 
106 



house in the suburbs if she really loved a man. She 
would make the man believe that he owned a- mag- 
nificent villa, and was the happiest fellow in New Jersey. 

Mr. Gibson has a great responsibility on his shoul- 
ders, and if he once fully realizes it, it will keep him 
awake nights. I wonder if he knows that there are 
thousands of American girls, from Oshkosh to Key 
West, who are trying to live up to the standard of 
his girls. You can always tell when a girl is taking 
the Gibson Cure by the way she fixes her hair. I've 
watched them go through the whole scale from 
Psyche knots, to Pompadour, to Bath Buns, to side 
waves with a bewitching part in the middle. 

Then, too, he has set a most adorable fashion in 
widows. I know sane, intelligent bachelors who 
prefer the Gibson Widow to the Girl. The trouble 
with the Widow is that she is so transitory. You are 
dead certain that she is just waiting to be asked, and 
that you are the man to ask her. 

Now a real Art Critic would not tell you about 
the girls and the widows in Gibson's book, but would 
give you a lot of information about the wonderful 
technic, the simplicity of line, the grace of compo- 
sition, the freedom, the directness, etc. I've heard 
men say who know (and real critics all know), that 
Gibson has all of those things, and a good many 
more. And I believe he has ; but he does not make 
much fuss about them. He goes right along making 
better and better pictures, working with energy and 
intelligence — and the other fellows do the talking. 
107 



A, B. FROST 

I ONCE heard the editor of a humorous paper say 
that A. B. Frost was the best caricaturist in 
America, and that he often picked up his series of 
sketches called " The Humane Man and the Bull 
Calf" and looked them over in order to have a good 
laugh. Now there must be something in the work 
of a man who can make the editor of a humorous 
paper laugh outside of business hours. Hopkinson 
Smith, in trying to explain psychologically why we 
laugh at Mr. Frost's caricatures, says that "no man 
laughs effectively with pen or brush who does not 
laugh with his own soul first" — thus implying that, 
among his other admirable possessions, Frost owns a 
laughing soul. That seems like a good explanation, 
but, as I don't know anything about Mr. Frost's 
soul, I asked him about it, and he replied that " Bun- 
ner's article about me in Harper'' s Magazine, for Oc- 
tober, 1892, contains all the facts." I looked it up 
and found that Mr. Bunner believed that " honesty " 
was the principal characteristic of Frost's art — that 
it is honest clear through, including its "American 
atmosphere." I always suspected that Mr. Frost 
108 



was honest, and I'm glad to find it confirmed by one 
of his friends — but somehow that does not help to 
explain why we laugh at his pictures. I've known 
some very good men who laughed at pictures made 
by rogues. 

It's a very good start, though, toward our under- 
standing of Mr. Frost to know that he is " honest " 
and has a " laughing soul," but I suspected that his 
models had something to do with the real funniness 
of his pictures, and I asked him about it. 

" I use one model for all my men," he replied. 
"I rarely have more than one model for old and 
young, black or white. If I could get a model for 
every figure I draw I would do so, but it is out of the 
question with such rapid work as illustration. I 
might mention that there is a singular peculiarity 
about the women ; all the handsome ones are stupid 
and can't put an idea into a pose, and all the bright 
ones who can and will pose and help your work are 
decidedly plain both as to face and figure. I have 
never been able to get much satisfaction out of the 
surrounding rural population as models. I have tried 
the local picturesque old men, with the result of hav- 
ing them go to sleep when I gave them a comfortable 
pose, and having them wriggle all the time when I 
didn't. The local small boy is better, but he is al- 
ways sent in his Sunday clothes, in which he is far 
from picturesque." 

As a great deal of Mr. Frost's work is done for the 
magazines about six months before the date of publi- 
109 



cation, this question of models is still further com- 
plicated with the necessity of getting the honest 
American atmospheric effect that Mr. Bunner praises. 
One August, when the thermometer stood about 90 , 
even on the hills of Madison, N. J., where Mr. Frost 
lives, he had a fine run of work for the Christmas mag- 
azines that demanded night snow-scenes for a steady 
background. So for several weeks the artist used to 
retire to his studio, darken the windows, and study 
night effects in a stifling atmosphere. It is no won- 
der that the rural population of Morris County are a 
trifle restless and unsatisfactory as models. 

Every one knows how realistic are the animals in 
Frost's pictures, with infinite variety in pose and ex- 
pression — revealing many degrees of emotion, as those 
will remember who have seen the series known as 
" Violet's Experience." He has confessed the secret 
of this success : "I have a very fat white bull-dog 
who has learned to pose. My man holds him for a 
while till he is settled down, and then he seems to 
know what I want and will keep his position for a 
long time, looking beseechingly at me every now and 
then. When I am through and give him the word he 
will bounce about and bark delightedly, and then go 
out as soon as possible. One pose is enough for him." 

Mr. Frost does not say that the white bull-dog 
poses for the whole animal kingdom, just as the one 
man poses for all humanity, but it is a fair inference, 
and certainly helps to confirm the "laughing-soul" 
theory of Mr. Smith. 



Another thing which makes Mr. Frost's soul laugh 
is when people solemnly ask him, " Do you read the 
story you are illustrating ? " "I wonder whether they 
think I know it by intuition," he said to a friend, 
" or whether I sit up nights with the author and have 
him tell me." 

As Mr. Frost is very fond of the country and of 
animals, it is natural that he should have taken re- 
cently to doing sporting pictures, and has a number 
of subjects which he is working up. He is person- 
ally fond of shooting, but gets little time to go long 
distances from home where game abounds. On those 
rare occasions when he combines sketching with his 
shooting trips he meets with amusing, though often 
annoying experiences, many of which have found 
their way into his humorous sketches. "They al- 
ways speak of a landscape as ' a scenery,' and tell 
you where there are much better ' sceneries, ' " he 
says. One old boy came every day to watch him as 
he was painting a study of some cherry-trees, and 
professed a great love for pictures and praised Frost's 
work highly. After a long harangue about art and 
his fondness for it, the old man said one day : " Do 
you know, if had a hundred thousand dollars I be- 
lieve I'd be durn fool enough to buy some of them 
things." 

"On another occasion," says Mr. Frost, "I was 

trying to paint a sunset, and, having made a failure 

of my sketch, I scraped it off the canvas and told a 

farmer who had been watching me for some time that 

in 



I had not worked quick enough to get the effect. 
After some consideration he replied, ' Wall, why don't 
two or three of yez go at it at onct? ' " 

One reason why Mr. Frost's pictures are always 
humanly interesting and fresh in subject and idea is 
that not only does he work steadily and very hard, 
but he manages to get his fun along with his work. 
That means that his art and his life are thoroughly 
united, and he never will have regrets that in follow- 
ing art he perhaps missed life, or in living happily he 
perhaps missed art. Work has been his normal con- 
dition from the day when, fifteen years old, he went 
into the employ of an engraver in Philadelphia and be- 
gan to learn the art by running errands. In less than 
a year he took up lithography, and worked at it for five 
or six years. Mr. Frost was fortunate in having for 
a friend William J. Clarke, a brother of the humorist 
who wrote under the name "Max Adeler," and he 
insisted that Frost should illustrate his brother's book, 
" Out of the Hurly-Burly," which he did to the 
delight of the author and the public. Mr. Bunner 
says they are very bad wood-cuts, " that look as if 
they were carved with a penknife ' ' (which was not 
Frost's fault), but I remember laughing over them 
many an evening when I was a boy — and all the 
other boys did likewise. That was the beginning of 
Frost's career as an illustrator, which soon brought 
him to New York to work on the Graphic; and in 
1876 he joined Abbey, Reinhart, and Alexander at 
Harper's. He had taken drawing lessons at the Phil- 
112 



adelphia Academy of Fine Arts in the evenings, but 
in 1877 decided to get a more thorough training by 
going to England. In a year he returned to the 
United States, and settled down to steady work near 
Philadelphia, where he was married in 1883. 

Mr. Frost makes his home on the top of a hill 
near Madison, where the "sceneries" are a good 
crop, raised on a farm of about one hundred and 
forty acres, with a house in the middle of it that has 
big pillars along the front. 

Mr. Frank R. Stockton is a neighbor of Mr. Frost's. 
He also is a farmer when he is not trying to solve the 
riddle of "The Lady or the Tiger?" If you ask 
Mr. Stockton about Frost he'll tell you that Frost is 
one of the best fellows and best artists in the world — 
but no farmer. " Why, he tried to sell me what he 
called a first-class horse last summer, and you could 
hear his joints rattle when he walked. Besides he is 
no judge of cows." 

If you ask Frost about Stockton he'll tell you that 
he is the best of neighbors and writes boss stories — 
"but he's no farmer. He offered to sell me one of 
his first-class cows, and I had to ask him whether a 
set of false teeth went with the cow, before he saw 
that I would not buy her. Besides, Stockton is no 
judge of horses." 

And this is the end of the chapter, and nothing has 
been said about the large amount of admirable work 
on which Mr. Frost's great reputation as an illustrator 
is built. But everybody knows about that, for every- 

"3 



body has seen his pictures in Stockton's " Rudder 
Grange," Lewis Carroll's " Phantasmagoria," Octave 
Thanet's "Stories of a Western Town," Munkit- 
trick's " Farming," Bunner's " Story of a New York 
House," and Frost's own books " Stuff and Non- 
sense " and " The Bull Calf and Other Tales." If 
you say nice things about his illustrations to him he 
will hear you patiently, and then quizzically reply : 
"Yes, but like every other illustrator under the sun, 
I want to be a painter. ' ' 



114 



F. MARION CRAWFORD 

THERE is no need to localize this conversation 
with F. Marion Crawford, for he is equally at 
home in a dozen great cities of the world. The 
readers of his books do not need any particular back- 
ground to explain the man ; he is a thorough cosmo- 
polite. But personally I have always thought of Mr. 
Crawford as working in a grotto under the cliffs of 
Sorrento, with the flashing waters of the bay shining 
through the arched opening, and the little waves 
playing on the white sand, almost at his feet. There 
I have often imagined him sitting before a little 
square and much-worn table of pine, with nothing on 
it but reams of paper and a bottle of ink, and on one 
corner, near his hand, a teapot, under which the pale 
blue flame is always burning. I have pictured him 
there, day after day, drinking unnumbered cups of 
tea, and summoning out of the dark recesses of the 
grotto the strange and romantic company who are his 
familiars — Paul Patoff, Dr. Claudius, Saracinesca, 
Gouache, Mr. Isaacs, Pain Lai, Marzio, Zoroaster. 
They spring from the darkness, talk with him awhile, 
disappear and reappear, forming dramatic groups and 
IJ 5 



doing daring deeds. And, while they come and go, 
he is always writing, writing, imperturbably writing, 
even when talking with them. I do not know where 
I first got this idea, but I think I can trace it to a 
chapter in " To Leeward " and a chance newspaper 
paragraph. At any rate, I have been a firm believer 
in that grotto for many years, and I want to continue 
to believe in it. Since I have known Mr. Crawford 
personally, I have carefully avoided asking him about 
it, for I don't want to destroy the illusion, if it is 
one, and I don't believe it is an illusion. With 
each new novel of his that I have read, I have seen 
the grotto grow a little larger, the darkness become 
more populous. I used to think that on some sunny 
day I should be rowed across the bay of Sorrento 
(perhaps by one of the "Children of the King"), 
and should be landed from the little boat at the very 
mouth of the cave; and then I should introduce my- 
self to Mr. Crawford, and be asked to have a cup of 
tea and a smoke. When we had talked awhile, I 
hoped he would summon his familiars from the dark- 
ness to smoke and talk with us. That is where and 
how this conversation should have taken place. 

But there are some things that even a romantic 
novelist cannot do, though Thackeray said that " any- 
thing you like happens in Fable-land." So we were 
compelled to talk in a room, in the heart of New 
York, which had little in it except books, and a big 
chair, and a blaze of cannel-coal in the grate. If 
you fill the big chair with Mr. Crawford, smoking an 
116 



English bull-dog pipe in which is some of Barrie's 
"Arcadia Mixture," you will have all the back- 
ground that is needed for this conversation. 

" You know," he said, " that my father, Thomas 
Crawford, was a Scotch-Irishman, born in the West 
of Ireland, and brought to this country when very 
young. His father acquired a small business in New 
York which supported him comfortably, and he 
wished his son, my father, to take part in it ; but the 
boy had a strong artistic bent, and of his own initia- 
tive went to a wood-carver to learn his trade. Later, 
wishing still greater freedom for his skill, he learned 
marble-carving, and, by a curious coincidence, he 
designed the handsome mantels in the house of Mr. 
Ward, his future father-in-law, at the corner of Bond 
Street and Broadway. This and other of his work 
was so remarkable that my grandfather and his friends 
determined that he should have the best opportunities 
to study sculpture, and he was sent to Rome, where 
he was a pupil of the great Thorwaldsen. While a 
young sculptor in Rome, gaining recognition every 
day, he met Miss Louisa Ward, who was travelling 
with Dr. Samuel G. Howe and his wife, Julia Ward 
Howe. They fell in love and were married, and 
made Rome their home. I am the youngest of their 
four children. When I was about two years old (in 
1S56) I was sent to this country, and lived with 
some kinsfolk on a farm near Bordentown, N. J. 
Among the earliest things that I remember is my 
great delight in watching the coming and going of 
117 



the trains of cars as they shot across the farm near 
the old house. My father died in London, in 1857, 
when I was three years old, and soon after I was 
taken back to Italy, where all my youth was spent." 

I asked Mr. Crawford to tell me about his educa- 
tion as a boy. It seemed to recall a host of pleasant 
recollections. 

" Most of my boyhood was spent under the direc- 
tion of a French governess. Not only did I learn 
that language from her, but all of my studies, geog- 
raphy, arithmetic, etc., were taught me in French, 
and I learned to write it with great readiness as a 
mere boy, because it was the language of my daily 
tasks. The consequence is that to this day I write 
French with the ease of English. There have been 
times when I knew that I had lost some of my facility 
in speaking French, through long absence from the 
country ; but the acquirement of writing it is always 
with me, which shows the value of early impressions 
in that direction." 

I remembered hearing St. Paul's School men speak 
of the days when Mr. Crawford was a student at 
Concord, N. H., and I asked him when he had been 
there. 

" I was about twelve years old," he said, " when I 
was sent over to America again, and went to St. 
Paul's. There I found that the fact that I had 
been taught Latin by a natural, and not an artificial 
method, gave me a great advantage. My Latin tutor 
in Rome was a man whose ideas of learning that lan- 
11S 



guage were most original then, although they have 
since become more common in certain systems. I 
remember that my first lesson in Latin was to read 
one of the very short letters of Cicero, only two or 
three lines. We began by reading, and, as a conse- 
quence, I was interested from the very first lesson. 
You know that in Rome you are surrounded with 
Latin inscriptions on the public buildings and monu- 
ments, so that the whole language had a reality to me 
that it could hardly have to an American boy, espe- 
cially one who has learned it by way of the rudi- 
ments of grammar. ' ' 

We had a long talk about the various steps in his 
education, which seemed to be full of pleasant mem- 
ories for Mr. Crawford. He recalled his student 
days with a clergyman in the English village of Hat- 
field Regis, and the gayer life at Trinity College, 
Cambridge, where he went in for boating, and, in- 
cidentally, for mathematics. " They thought I was 
a mathematician in those days," he said. Then fol- 
lowed student days at Karlsruhe and Heidelberg, 
from 1S74 to 1876. "Of course," he said, "I 
learned my German in those days — learned to speak 
it readily ; but I have never acquired the ability to 
write it as fluently as I do French." 

"And then," he continued, "I studied at the 
University of Rome (1876-78), and I had a tutor 
who taught me Sanskrit, and interested me in Buddh- 
ism and other Oriental mysteries. There came a 
time when my people lost a great deal of money, and 
119 



I was in a quandary what to do. This tutor advised 
me to take an opportunity to go to India and learn 
Sanskrit, and then I could come back and easily get 
a good professorship. So, with the enthusiasm of 
youth, I borrowed one hundred pounds, and sailed 
for Bombay. But money seemed to be as hard to 
earn in Bombay as elsewhere. I tried in vain for all 
sorts of positions. I wrote occasionally articles for a 
Bombay newspaper, and made the acquaintance of 
the editor, but these were not enough to replenish my 
stock of money. One day I found myself reduced to 
my last two pounds, and I could not see where more 
was coming from ; but I was young and strong, and 
I said that if the worst came, I could enlist in the 
British army, and have plenty of adventure, and food 
and clothes. I sat down and wrote a letter of appli- 
cation to the proper officer, sealed and stamped it, 
and held it in readiness to mail when I should find 
that there was nothing else to be done. The next 
day I received a letter from the editor of the Bombay 
Gazette, asking me to call. When I presented my- 
self, he said that he had received a letter from the 
proprietor of the Allahabad Indian Herald, asking 
whether he could send him immediately a good man 
to take charge of that paper. He explained to me 
that it was a very difficult undertaking, as I should 
have to do all the editorial work myself; that Allaha- 
bad was a thousand miles away ; and that, in certain 
seasons, the climate was disagreeable and dangerous. 
Nevertheless he asked me would I go ? ' Would a 
120 



duck swim?' I said, and started immediately. I 
found that the paper was a daily, issued every after- 
noon. I was my own news collector, managing ed- 
itor, and editorial writer. I wrote a leading article 
and several editorial paragraphs every day, collected 
and wrote the local news, edited the correspondence 
from all over India — some of it written in the worst 
English that I have ever encountered. There were 
days when I worked sixteen hours at a stretch ; there 
were days at the beginning of the rainy season when 
the combination of heat and moisture was enough to 
drive a man who had nothing to do to an extremity. 
How much worse it was, you can imagine, when one 
had to work sixteen hours in that atmosphere, and 
that, too, in daily journalism, an occupation in which 
\ I had had no experience whatever." 

I said that it reminded me of a story of Kipling's. 
"Yes," he replied, "'The Man who would be 
King ' — that is it exactly. I always read Kipling 
with a flood of recollections of India, so true are 
his stories to the reality. Of course," he said, "I 
picked up a great deal about Buddhism and other 
oriental lore, and it was at Simla that I met the orig- 
inal of Mr. Isaacs — a real man whose name was 
Jacobs. Of him I shall tell you by and by. For 
eighteen months I edited the Indian Herald, and I 
think it was the hardest work that I have ever done. 
By and by, in 1880, I returned to Italy, and there I 
again found myself without means or work, so I took 
passage on an old steamer for America, early in 18S1. 
121 



I was the only cabin passenger on board. The boat 
was a regular tramp ; we struck terrible storms, the 
machinery broke down, and under sail we slowly 
made our way westward. I had always been fond of 
die sea, and, as the ship was short-handed, I took my 
watch, turn and turn about, with the captain and the 
mates. After six weeks we got to Bermuda in a 
most dilapidated condition, and as I was the only 
one who could speak English, the captain asked me 
to go ashore with the papers. The sea was running 
high, and, as the small boat turned in between the 
headlands toward the harbor, the high waves swamped 
us. We clung to the boat, and, as luck would have 
it, a launch came along just then and picked us up. 
After we had refitted at Bermuda, we sailed away 
toward New York, and finally reached here in March. 
I liked the sea and I liked adventure, and so the voy- 
age did not seem as bad as it might have been." 

" You should put that voyage in a story," I sug- 
gested, thinking of some of Kipling's tales of the sea ; 
and it is curious, by the way, that Mr. Crawford, 
with all his love of the sea, has never written a reg- 
ular sea-story, although there are several chapters in 
" Dr. Claudius " describing an ocean voyage. 

It was about this time, when he was twenty-seven 
years of age, that Mr. Crawford entered Harvard as a 
special student, and took Professor Lanman's course 
in Sanskrit. He lived between New York and Bos- 
ton, sometimes in one city and sometimes in the other, 
from December, 1882, to May, 1883, and contributed 
122 



special articles to periodicals. He wrote book re- 
views and articles on philosophical themes. " I got 
so far," he said, "as to receive one hundred dollars 
for an article. Of course it was a precarious living, 
but there was always Uncle Sam (Samuel Ward) to 
whom I could go." 

"And now tell me," I said, "the true story of 
how you came to write 'Mr. Isaacs.' I have read 
different versions of it." 

"It has once or twice been told correctly," said 
Mr.' Crawford, " and this is exactly how it happened : 
On May 5, 1S82, Uncle Sam asked me to dine with 
him at the New York Club, which was then in the 
building on Madison Square, now called the Madison 
Square Bank Building. It goes without saying that 
we had a good dinner if it was ordered by Uncle 
Sam. We had dined rather early, and were sitting 
in the smoking-room, overlooking Madison Square, 
while it was still light. As was perfectly natural we 
began to exchange stories while smoking, and I told 
him, with a great deal of detail, my recollections of 
an interesting man whom I had met in Simla. When 
I had finished he said to me, ' That is a good two- 
part magazine story, and you must write it out im- 
mediately.' He took me around to his apartments, 
and that night I began to write the story of ' Mr. 
Isaacs.' Part of the first chapter was written after- 
ward, but the rest of that chapter and several succeed- 
ing chapters are the story that I told to Uncle Sam. 
I kept at it from day to day, getting more interested 
123 



in the work as I proceeded, and from time to time I 
would read a chapter to Uncle Sam. When I got 
through the original story, I was so amused with the 
writing of it that it occurred to me that I might as 
well make Mr. Isaacs fall in love with an English 
girl, and then I kept on writing, to see what would 
happen. By and by I remembered a mysterious 
Buddhist whom I had once met in India, and so I 
introduced him, to still further complicate matters. 
I went to Newport to visit my aunt, Mrs. Julia Ward 
Howe, while I was in the midst of the story, and 
continued it there. It was on June 13, 1882, while 
in her home, that I finished the last chapter of ' Mr. 
Isaacs ; ' and, Uncle Sam appearing in Newport at 
that time, I read him the part of the story which he 
had not heard. ' You will give it to me,' he said ; 
' I shall try and find a publisher.' He had for many 
years frequented the book-store of Macmillan, and 
was well acquainted with the elder George Brett. 
He took the manuscript to Mr. Brett, who forwarded 
it to the English house, and in a short time it was 
accepted." 

"Having tasted blood," said Mr. Crawford, "I 
began, very soon after finishing ' Mr. Isaacs,' to write 
another story for my own amusement — ' Dr. Clau- 
dius.' Late in November I was advised by Messrs. 
Macmillan that in order to secure an English, as well 
as an American, copyright, I must be on English 
soil on the day of publication. So I went to St. 
John, New Brunswick, where I had a very pleasant 
124 



time, and continued to write the story of' Dr. Clau- 
dius,' which I finished in December. ' Mr. Isaacs ' 
was published on December 6th, and I, of course, 
knew nothing about its reception. However, toward 
the end of the month, I started on my return jour- 
ney to the United States, and when I arrived in Bos- 
ton, on the day before Christmas, and stepped out of 
the train, I was surprised beyond measure to find the 
railway news-stands almost covered with great posters 
announcing 'Mr. Isaacs.' The next morning, at 
my hotel, I found a note awaiting me from T. B. 
Aldrich, then editor of the Atlantic Monthly, asking 
me for an interview, at which he proposed that I 
write a serial for his magazine. I felt confident 
then, and do now, that ' Dr. Claudius ' would not be 
a good serial story. However, I promised that he 
should have a serial, and began soon after to write 
'The Roman Singer,' which was completed in Feb- 
ruary, 1883." 

This led me to ask Mr. Crawford about the rapid- 
ity with which he worked. " I was told the other 
day," I said, " that you wrote ' The Three Fates ' in 
seven days." 

"No," he replied; "that would have been a 
physical impossibility. As a matter of fact, I was not 
very well, and spent a whole summer writing it from 
time to time. One of my stories, however, ' Mar- 
zio's Crucifix,' which is not a long novel, I wrote in 
ten days, in its original form, as it appeared serially. 
Afterward two chapters were added for book publi- 
cs 



cation. ' The Tale of a Lonely Parish ' I wrote in 
twenty-four days — one chapter a day, of about five 
thousand words. Both of those stories were easy to 
write, because I was perfectly familiar with the back- 
ground of each. I had once studied silver-carving 
with a skilled workman, and the idea suggested itself 
to me to write a story about an atheist who should 
put his life and soul into the carving of a crucifix. 
With that for a motive, the story wrote itself. In 
the case of ' The Lonely Parish,' I found myself with 
a promise unredeemed, given to my publishers, for a 
novel at a certain date ; I had already sold the novel 
which I intended for them to a magazine for serial 
publication. So I looked around in my memory for 
some spot which was thoroughly familiar to me as a 
background for my novel — so familiar that I need not 
invent details, but simply call them up from my mem- 
ory. I immediately thought of the little village of 
Hatfield Regis, in Hertfordshire, where I was sent as 
a pupil to a clergyman. I lifted that little village bod- 
ily out of my memory, and put it into my story, even 
to the extent of certain real names and localities." 

The life of Mr. Crawford, from the success of 
"Mr. Isaacs" to the present day, has been one of 
hard literary work. Pie sailed for Italy in May, 
1883, spent most of the year 1884 in Constantinople, 
where he was married to a daughter of General Ber- 
dan, and in 1885 went back to Italy and to Sorrento, 
where his villa is, and where he has lived ever since, 
with the exception of his visits to America in 1S93-5. 
126 



In these thirteen years he has produced twenty-five 
novels, and his popularity continues unabated. 

"What," I asked, "is the germ of a novel for 
you ? ' ' 

" It is a character, and not a situation, which gen- 
erally suggests a novel to me. I think that in most 
cases my characters are portraits of real people in 
imaginary situations; that is why they cannot be re- 
cognized by the originals, because they are out of 
their usual environment. There are two exceptions 
to this way of conceiving a novel ; as I have already 
told you, ' The Tale of a Lonely Parish ' and ' Mar- 
zio's Crucifix ' were suggested to me by the real back- 
ground. ' ' 

"Won't you tell me," I asked, "how you goto 
work to construct a novel ? " 

" Since my first novel or two, I always see the end 
of the story from the start. When I have thought it 
over in this way, I take a large sheet of paper, and, 
having decided on the size of the book, I make up my 
mind that it shall have — say twenty-four chapters. 
Along the left margin I mark the numbers of these 
chapters, one under the other, a line for each. If it 
is to be in three volumes, as most of my novels are in 
England, I place a horizontal mark after each eight 
chapter numbers. That indicates the volume. Then, 
after the manner of a playwright choosing what he 
calls his ' curtain situation,' I decide on the culminat- 
ing incident in each volume, and also decide in 
which chapter it shall fall, and place a catchword in- 
127 



cheating that situation on the line with the chapter 
number. Then I fill in for the other chapters a 
catchword or phrase which indicates the minor inci- 
dents in succession that culminate in the major inci- 
dent. Of course all these things do not come at 
once, and I may fill in, from time to time, after I have 
begun the novel. But when the skeleton is compara- 
tively complete, I begin to work. Along the right- 
hand margin I write down the calendar of the novel, 
as it may be called, from day to day. If it is a novel 
in which the action takes place in a very short time, 
I write down not only the day of the month and 
week, but the hour of the day, so that the action of 
the story may move logically. With this skeleton of 
the novel before me, I write with great rapidity. I 
have found that if I write a novel slowly my concep- 
tion of the leading characters may change from week 
to week, so that in the end the novel is not so forcible 
or so complete as those written rapidly." 

" Do you ever dictate? " I asked. 

" I dictated one novel under stress of circumstances, 
and I do not think that I shall ever dictate another, 
for I consider it a relative failure." 

" You are oftenest thought of, I think, as the author 
of the Saracinesca group of stories. Could you tell 
me how you planned them ? ' ' 

" I think the origin of the stories was a walk I 

took, in the interior of Italy, with a tutor, when I 

was a boy — the region in which I have placed the 

Saracinesca estates. When I wrote the first novel of 

128 



the series I did not intend a group ; but the plan 
grew upon me, and the first story was received so 
kindly that I decided to continue the history through 
several generations, and make it, in a sense, represen- 
tative of the life of the nobility of a certain class in 
modern Italy." 

"You have been writing a group of New York 
novels, in which the fortunes of a family are elabo- 
rated after the manner of your Saracinesca series? " 

' ' Yes ; I worked very hard at the group, and the 
first of the series,' ' Katharine Lauderdale,' has already 
gone through many editions. The second is called 
' The Ralstons. ' Some of the characters also appear 
in my little novel of Bar Harbor, ' Love in Idleness.' 
In ' Casa Braccio,' I have introduced characters from 
both the Italian and American groups of novels." 

This ended our conversation. The impression left 
on my mind was of delightful converse with a virile, 
strong, intellectual man, whose imagination and 
emotions are the obedient servants of a dominating 
will ; above all things, a man of the world in the best 
sense, and a scholar in the best sense, whose knowl- 
edge is a delight to him, whose contact with people 
in great cities has broadened and deepened his serious 
views of life ; a man with that poise of body and 
mind which assures one that at forty his work as a 
novelist has hardly reached maturity, but that the 
best of it lies in the future. 



129 



HENRY VAN DYKE 

IF you walk across the campus under the old elms at 
Princeton, almost any night of the spring or fall 
terms, you will probably hear somewhere a group or 
marching body of students singing, to the tune of 
"Marching through Georgia" — 

" Nassau! Nassau ! Ring out the chorus free. 
Nassau ! Nassau ! Thy jolly sons are we. 
Cares shall be forgotten, all our sorrows flung away, 
While we are marching thro' Princeton ! " 

Most of the fun which Princeton students have had 
in the past twenty years has been enjoyed to the 
words of this song, written by Henry van Dyke, of 
the Class of '73. Since that time he has turned his 
attention to other things, and has been hard at work 
for fifteen years as the minister of two large churches, 
one at Newport and one in New York. Of course it 
is hardly fair to hold Dr. van Dyke responsible for 
all the revels which his song has inspired ; but a strict 
Calvinist cannot refrain from putting it on record 
that any account of the life and works of Dr. van 
130 



Dyke which does not take this song into the reckon- 
ing is incomplete. 

It is a good song, at any rate, for the reason that 
Dr. van Dyke has always been a wholesome man. 
It is hard to spoil a man who has always been fond of 
hunting and fishing and the free life of the woods. 
Three years at a theological seminary can't drive 
that out of a man, especially if his father was fond of 
the same things and taught him to love them. 

" I have fished from Norway to the Nile," he re- 
cently said, " and the only kind of hunting I do not 
like is heresy-hunting." 

I asked him for a " basis of facts ' ' from which I 
could start to build up a character for him, and he 
replied : 

"On reflection I am chagrined to discover how 
few facts there are in my personal history — unless you 
propose to count as facts the fish caught from the age 
of five to the present time." 

I tried to talk theology with him one afternoon in 
order to discover whether I could approve of his 
Presbyterianism, but he switched the talk over to fish- 
ing for land-locked salmon at the Grande Decharge, 
and closed the theological discussion with the story of 
catching three brook trout in Lily Bay, up in Maine, 
that weighed eleven pounds. 

That is why I can't give his views on the inerran- 
cy of the Scriptures in this sketch. But I do know, 
for he has stated it with emphasis, that he has been 
trying " to do his part in keeping elbow-room for a 

131 



healthy mind in the Presbyterian Church — believing 
that a little modest ignorance is the best foundation 
for a sound theology." 

Every one who lives in New York knows that Dr. 
van Dyke is doing this very successfully in the his- 
toric old Brick Church at the corner of Fifth Avenue 
and Thirty-seventh Street. He has gathered around 
him there a strong congregation of refined people, 
who are interested in the aesthetic problems of living 
as well as the moral. For, so far as I can judge, the 
aim of Dr. Van Dyke's preaching and writing is to 
lead people to live full, healthy, and rational lives 
— with due regard to truth and beauty, as well as 
goodness. He has, I think, put a great deal of his 
creed into the dedication of his volume on "The 
Poetry of Tennyson : " 

To a Young Woman of an Old Fashion, who loirs 
Art, not for its own sake, but because it ennobles life ; 
who reads Poetry not to kill time but to fill it ivith 
beautiful thoughts ; and who still believes in God and 
Duty and Immortal Love. 

In one of his books he says, "A short creed well 
believed and honestly applied is what we need. The 
world waits, and we must pray and labor, not for a 
more complete and logical Theology, but for a more 
real and true and living Christianity." 

He put it all in a nutshell one day when we were 
talking, when he said: "It's better to live than to 
write about life." 

As a literary man Dr. van Dyke has received the 
132 



widest recognition for "The Poetry of Tennyson," 
which is not only a careful study of the technic of the 
poet, but in a much broader way is an interpretation 
of the views of art and life with which the poems 
abound. Tennyson appealed to him because his 
poems " voiced the great reaction out of the heart of 
a doubting age, toward the Christianity of Christ and 
the trust in Immortal Love. ' ' This volume met with 
the warmest approval from the poet himself, who fur- 
nished material to make the second edition more 
complete. During the last summer of his life, at the 
laureate's express wish, Dr. van Dyke visited him in 
England, and received his cordial thanks for his 
sympathetic interpretation. 

Another volume which has been welcomed with 
great favor is "The Christ-Child in Art," which is 
a commentary on the work of the masters in painting 
who have portrayed the Madonna and Child. 

He has also written a number of allegorical stories 
of unusual beauty in diction, and most graceful in 
fancy, among them ' ' The Oak of Geismar ' ' and 
"The Source" in Scribner' 1 s, and "The Story of 
the Other Wise Man " in Harper' 's. Some day he 
will put these, with other stories, in a volume which 
will gain for him recognition in another literary field. 

Dr. van Dyke's volumes of distinctly religious im- 
port are " The Reality of Religion " (1884), " The 
Story of the Psalms" (1887), and "Straight Ser- 
mons" (1893). And of equal moral importance 
might be mentioned his yellow-covered tract on the 
l 33 



copyright question which was entitled " The Sin of 
Literary Piracy." 

To any one still hungering for a " basis of facts " 
about Dr. van Dyke, it may be said that he is the 
son of the late Henry J. van Dyke, for so many years 
pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn. 
He was born November 10, 1852, in Germantown, 
Pa., just " two hundred years after the arrival of his 
ancestor, Jan Thomasse van Dyke, in this country," 
and he is, therefore, " Dutch as Holland." He was 
graduated at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 
1S69, at Princeton College in 1873, and Princeton 
Theological Seminary in 1877. He further studied 
philosophy and theology in Berlin under Weiss, 
Dorner, and Harms. He was pastor of the United 
Congregational Church, Newport, R. I., in 1879-82, 
and in 1883 came to the old Brick Church in New 
York. Princeton gave him the degree of D.D. in 
1884. Harvard elected him University Preacher for 
1890-92, and he was appointed to the Lyman 
Beecher lectureship at Yale for 1895-96. 



134 



ARCADIAN OPINIONS 



SUMMER READING 

WHY should anyone read books for amusement in 
summer? Amusement is a matter of choice, 
until riches make of it a profession. Of course for 
the very rich amusement and pleasure are simply the 
synonyms of spending money agreeably. That usu- 
ally implies the spending of it ostentatiously or in a 
way to arouse the envy of those less fortunate. But 
the well-to-do man or woman of scant or moderate 
leisure cannot afford to take envy into account as one 
of the forms of amusement. And it usually happens 
that they are the very people who put a few books in 
a corner of their luggage when they start off to camp 
or the seashore for a breathing spell. If you ask 
them why, they always say that it may rain for a day 
or two, and moreover the days are so long ! 

Can anyone imagine the days being too long for a 
dweller in the city who has only one month of the 
twelve in which to loose himself from the routine of 
living ! The trouble is with that very routine to 
which his nerves have become so adjusted that the}' 
respond with pleasure to it alone. When it isn't 
pursued he misses it, just as he misses his wife, whom 
l 37 



he knows he has unhappily married. But then he 
has become used to her particular way of quarrelling, 
and his faculties respond to it with alertness. 

It is the same way with reading. He was brought 
up to believe that there was some particular virtue in 
a book ; that it had an intimate connection with 
what was called " improvement of the mind." So 
when he had leisure he went for a book, as a toper 
for whiskey. By and by he found that it made him 
" forget things," and he accumulated his little likes 
and dislikes for various authors as he would for brands 
of cigars. When he got that far he believed that he 
had acquired " taste " in reading, and perhaps he 
began to accumulate a library as he would a wine- 
cellar. 

So when he goes off for a summer vacation you 
will see him, on a rainy day in camp, pull out a book 
and go at it with the complacency of a man who 
knows he is doing his duty. There may be half 
a dozen interesting men in camp who have seen a 
great deal of the world near at hand. He never looks 
on them as an opportunity. He would rather read a 
book by some interesting invalid who likes to put her 
sensations on paper, than talk with a man who had 
slain wild beasts in a jungle, or ran for sheriff in a 
Western mining-camp. 

Most contemporary books (except as repositories of 
valuable information) are merely substitutes for en- 
tertaining men and women, and usually very poor 
substitutes. Your manner of life may make it neces- 
138 



sary for you to enlarge your horizon principally by 
books when at home ; but when you are away from 
the old surroundings, if you are the wise man you 
think you are, you will leave your books at home and 
try to meet some new types of the human animal. It 
may make you more contented with your own way 
of life to discover how many worse kinds there are. 



139 



"SANT' ILARIO" IN CAMP 

ONE'S recollection of a book is composite — part 
the impression made by the literary creation, and 
part by the circumstances under which it was read. 
Many a dull book becomes a pleasant memory, and a 
work of genius perhaps is associated with pain. 

To think of Crawford's " Sant' Ilario," recalls a 
rainy day at Cedar Island Camp. The foreground of 
the memory is the streets and squares of modern 
Rome ; the background is a broad gray surface of 
water stretching off to a shore covered with stately 
cedars, poplars, and balsams. As in a cyclorama, it is 
hard to distinguish where Rome ends and the Adiron- 
dack lake begins. You know that the beautiful Co- 
rona lived in the stately Palazzo Saracinesca, and you 
half believe that in one corner of that palace there is 
a long, narrow room with a wolf-skin stretched on 
the wall, and two bucks' heads on either side. And 
outside there is a rustic piazza with rubber coats, and 
guns, and fishing-tackle hanging on the logs. 

Through the open door you hear men's voices — 
laughter and blunt repartee, with a story now and 
then. Somehow you cannot quite determine whether 
140 



Sant' Ilario, Gouache, and San Giacinto, are having 
a game of poker or whether it is the three guides. 
You are sure, however, that the game is being played 
by the correct American rules. The excitement 
deepens ; you are absorbed in the story, and feel that 
a great crisis has been reached when the Garibaldians 
and Papal troops have a battle while the fate of a 
"jack-pot" is being determined. You hold your 
breath as the Papal soldiers charge up the hill, and 
are ready to break into cheers at the bravery of the 
solitary figure on a rampart tearing down the stone 
wall while the bullets strike all around him. With his 
fate still in doubt, you hear a shout of triumph, and 
learn that " four trays " have been successfully played 
against "three bullets," and that the "jack-pot" 
had been " scooped by Abner "—to use the elegant 
phrase which lingers in your ear. 

This victory overshadows the battle of the Papal 
troops, and increases in importance with later reports 
that " Ab has cleaned up both the Old Man and 
Iry." 

Then night comes down with the pouring rain. 
xAll dwellers in the Adirondacks are divided into two 
classes — Guides and Sports — and both classes gather 
around the roaring fire. You join the circle, and in 
the quiet of an after-dinner smoke float off to Rome 
and the Saracinesca. The fate of the beautiful Faus- 
tina is becoming engrossing, when the Old Man 
breaks the silence with a bear story. Mr. Crawford 
cannot hold his own as a teller of stories with an in- 
141 



telligent Adirondack guide. You soon leave Faustina 
in prison to follow the veteran guide into a bear's 
cave ; or to go on a trail with him through the forest 
after a bear that ran so fast that he left the mark of 
his stomach in the light snow at every jump. 
" There ain't no dog in these parts can catch them 
on a dead run," he said to the incredulous. 

When the stories are ended you go to sleep in a 
bark cottage by the edge of the lake, and dream that 
Sant' Ilario is watching for deer with you in the 
flow -ground ; that you push the boat on a marsh 
island, and build a little fire of twigs and rushes ; that 
while the hounds are baying along the hillside, Sant' 
Ilario and you are discussing the next move of Gari- 
baldi, and plotting to release the beautiful Faustina 
from prison. Two shots down by Windmill Point 
startle you ! " That was Gouache shooting the deer," 
says Sant' Ilario. Then you hear the clear, sharp 
whistle of the huntsman calling in the hounds, and 
you know that the chase is ended. 

Together you row through the dead and spectral- 
like trees of the flow-ground, and out into the open 
lake. Soon you land on Windmill Point. 

"Where is the big buck?" you ask. And in 
your dream you do not know whether it is Gouache 
or Abner who replies : 

" It's a yearlin' doe. We robbed the cradle." 

The dream is prophetic of the great hunt on which 
you start that day. In the evening a huge fire of 
roots and knots is built in front of the open camp. 
142 



It is a gloomy, rainy night, but the camp is a cheery 
place. You sit on a bed of spruce boughs and watch 
the swaying flames — imagining that Montevarchi, 
Giovanni, and the rest are sitting in the shadow. 

" What do you think of ' Sant' Ilario? ' " is asked 
from a cloud of smoke which may belong to Gouache' s 
pipe. 

"It has given me so much pleasure," you say, 
" and is so interwoven with our experiences on this 
beautiful lake that I cannot express a critical opinion. 
All I know is that it made a rainy day in camp seem 
short. For me it is hereafter a part of Cedar Island ; 
and when I smell the odor of spruce, or am awakened 
by the music of waters, I shall at once think of ' Sant' 
Ilario.' " 



143 



A LEGEND OF THE HAPPY VALLEY 

MIDWAY between the crisp air and keen intelli- 
gence of the North and the lazy breezes of the 
impulsive South, there is a Happy Valley. It lies in 
the sheltering arms of two beautiful mountain ranges : 
the North Mountain peaks are blue and rugged, stand- 
ing out against the sky with bare, wrinkled, mascu- 
line brows ; but the South Mountain is a long, wavy 
line of soft, feminine curves, clad from head to foot 
in rich velvet — dark and green. The dwellers in the 
Happy Valley have long believed that they are 
watched over by two good Spirits : the genius of the 
North Mountain is a stern but benignant old man, 
while the South Mountain is the home of a gracious 
woman, full of charity and tenderness. Whether the 
people in the Valley are happy because these kind 
Spirits really exist, or merely because they believe in 
their existence, has never been determined by the 
sages who live there. They are content to know that 
the force of the North wind is broken before it reaches 
them, and that the scorching sirocco is cooled as it 
glides over the brow of the Southern hills. 

One Christmas Eve, very long ago, the good Spirits 
144 



looked down on the Valley, which was filled with 
laughter, good-will, and song that rose up like a flood 
to the very tops of the mountains, and overflowed 
into the country beyond. 

But there was one gloomy young man there, who 
sat in a room filled with shadows, and looked out 
upon a hill-top where the light of the stars showed a 
windrow of snow on the grave of his best friend. 

" How shall we bring cheer to him on Christmas 
Day ? ' ' asked the good Spirits of each other ; and 
far into the night they debated the question, sending 
messages back and forth so frequently that belated 
men thought the air was filled with snow. 

The old man on the North Mountain insisted that 
Wisdom would be his best comforter, but the Hama- 
dryad of the South was equally convinced of the 
power of Love. The end of the long discussion was 
a compromise, by which both Wisdom and Love 
were to be offered to the sorrowful young man on 
Christmas Day. 

So it happened that on the morrow the young 
man's Boston uncle sent him the Best Hundred 
Books, and his cousin from Virginia arrived, accom- 
panied with a beautiful daughter, whose eyes were 
like the depths of a pine forest when the sunlight sifts 
through the boughs. 

For five years the young man was absent from t'he 
Happy Valley. He loved much, he read many books, 
he travelled and studied in many lands ; and when 
i45 



he came home again on Christmas Eve, with wife and 
children, men called him wise. He was back in the 
old home, in the shadow-haunted room, looking out 
in the starlight upon the grave on the hill. Again 
the good mountain Spirits looked down upon the Val- 
ley and saw his face. There was no gloom in it, 
neither was there great joy. They could not read 
the riddle of his countenance, and they filled the air 
above the Valley with their vain questions. 

" Come," said the rugged old Genie of the North, 
" let us go down into the Valley and talk with this 
young man who has lived and suffered. We have 
dwelt on the mountain tops so long that we are out 
of touch with Humanity." 

" I will go with you," said the gentle Hamadryad, 
" though sympathy and love have always kept me 
nearer than you to the hearts of the people. My 
mountain tops are not in the clouds. ' ' 

So together they drifted into the presence of the 
young man — strange forms of ' ' mingled mist and 
light." 

" Five years ago I started you on the way of Wis- 
dom," said the grizzled old Genie. " Then you 
were in the shadow of a great sorrow ; now I think J 
see you filled with peace. Tell us — is Wisdom, thee, 
the royal road to happiness ? ' ' 

When the young man raised his eyes they were full 

of doubts and ambitions, struggling at the windows 

of his mind for glimpses of the light. " My friend," 

he said, " you started me upon an arduous journey. 

146 



I have toiled on through fog and marsh, without 
once feeling sure that I was upon the right way. I 
only know that I have a stouter heart than when I 
started, and I have courage left to cheer those who 
reach out their hands to me from the darkness." 

"But my gift of Love," said the Hamadryad; 
" surely it brought you more of happiness and joy 
than this? " 

"Love," said the young man, "was a precious 
gift, but it has doubled fate's opportunities to do me 
harm. Now, more than ever, am I the football of 
chance, and my capacity for suffering is increased. 
Love has brought me many things, but not happi- 
ness." 

"What, then," said the good Spirits together, 
" have Love and Wisdom brought you that are worth 
the having? " 

"Hope! " he said, while the light of a new day 
was creeping in at the window and brightening his 
tired face, "not for myself, but for " 

" Merry Christmas ! " the children shouted in 
glee, as the door swung suddenly open. Their faces 
were radiant with hope, and in them was the promise 
of the future. The Genie and the Hamadryad show- 
ered blessings on them as they vanished toward the 
mountain tops. 



i47 



A PLEA FOR "DIANA" 

A MEMORY OF THE LIGHTHOUSE AT MONTEREY. 

THE lighthouse-keeper led them through a neatly 
furnished room or two, up an easy stairway, and 
then abruptly to a perpendicular ladder, at the top of 
which there was a square of clear, blue sky — "a 
silky blue," said Adrian, " like a Yale banner at th© 
top of a coach on a football day. ' ' When he reached 
the last rung of the ladder and stepped out onto the 
breezy platform around the great sea-light, the silken 
banner had become an immeasurable dome of lumi- 
nous blue, without a fleck or spot of any other color. 

As Dupont pulled his rotund body through the 
narrow opening and stood in the bright sunlight he 
found breath to say : 

"Ah, Adrian, my friend, I now appreciate how 
Dante felt when he had reached the top of the moun- 
tain of Purgatory and emerged upon the beautiful 
Terrestrial Paradise, and Virgil said to him : 

'' ' Beyond the steep ways and the narrow art thou ; 

Behold the sun that shines upon thy forehead ; 

Behold the grass, the flowers, and the shrubs. 

Which of itself alone this land produces 1 ' " 

148 



" If I am playing Virgil to your Dante on this trip 
to Monterey," said Adrian, " I must remind you that 
it was on the borders of the Terrestrial Paradise that 
Virgil said good-by and left Dante to the fascinations 
of Matilda and Beatrice. See, there is one of them 
now, going across the fields to St. Mary's-by-the- 
Sea — 

' A lady all alone, who went along 
Singing and culling floweret after floweret, 
With which her pathway was all painted over.' 

Can you believe that this is Christmas Day; that 
Matilda there is going to her devotions in midwin- 
ter, clothed in white lawn and culling poppies by 
the way ; that yesterday we were shivering on the 
peaks of the Sierras, and to-day we are fanning our- 
selves by the Pacific? No, Dante, Virgil made a 
huge error in leaving you at the edge of the Terres- 
trial Paradise ! I propose to stay — at least till Bea- 
trice appears. I warn you I can't endure Beatrice, 
with the everlasting ' splendor of her laughing eyes.' 
Dante may have been deeply in love with Beatrice, 
but it has always seemed strange to me that he re- 
membered no other feature than her eyes. I think 
of her as one of those uninteresting women who make 
their eyes do duty for wit, intelligence, and vivac- 
ity." 

" We are too old for such as Beatrice, Adrian. At 
our age the only woman in the world is like Diana 
of The Crossways. ' ' 

"There you are again with one of George Mere- 
149 



dith's heroines ! From the Gotham Club to the 
tennis grounds at Del Monte I have had the journey 
across the continent decorated with eulogies of Mere- 
dith." 

" Come, Adrian, be honest. Confess that since 
we left Salt Lake your trips to the smoking-car have 
been made to elude my ridicule while you read 
Diana. ' ' 

"I see there is no escape from you, Dupont. 
Either we must discuss Diana, or separate, like Vir- 
gil and Dante, on Christmas Day." 

" It can't be helped. That stretch of dimpling, 
sunny water there, across the bay to Santa Cruz, re- 
minds me irresistibly of Diana — with 'all her face 
one tender sparkle of a smile.' " 

"Go on," said Adrian. "Your admiration for 
Meredith is a mania which can only be cured by giv- 
ing it free vent." 

" Well, then, I'll give you an unreasonable super- 
lative to start with. To me Diana Warwick is 
among the few irresistible women of fiction. Other 
writers may tell you over and over again that a 
woman is witty, fascinating, intelligent in every mo- 
tion of her mind. Meredith does a much more diffi- 
cult thing — he shows you the wit and intelligence, 
and leaves you to judge of its quality. He is one of 
the few writers who do not resort to generalizations 
to conceal their poverty in invention." 

"If you please, my friend," said the skeptical 
Adrian, "what became of Meredith's power of inven- 
*5° 



tion when he had once launched so fine a character as 
Diana Merlon ? I believe that he broke down in the 
middle of the story. From Diana's night-watch to 
the end of the tale is a disappointing anti-climax." 
Then Adrian blew fleecy whirls of smoke toward the 
stainless sky, and serenely leaned over the railing and 
looked out to the far horizon, waiting for the inevi- 
table explosion. 

Dupont was used to this form of baiting. It was 
understood between them that if they travelled to- 
gether they must disagree about everything except 
the itinerary of the journey. The wise Adrian often 
said: "Imagine two people whose minds are in 
similar grooves starting out on a vacation together ! 
One might as well carry a mirror for company and 
entertainment." 

" You know you are unfair, Adrian," said Dupont, 
warming up, as a true disciple. "You persist in 
belittling a great writer of English fiction because 
his vocabulary worries you. But there is Diana, my 
boy, from the first page to the last a creature of beauty 
and variety, and more charming under calumny than 
other women whose reputations are unassailed. What 
you call the anti-climax of the story is the most sub- 
tile and natural development of a complex character. 
It is not Diana who should be blamed for falling 
from her ideal, but a rotten social system which forced 
her into a false position." 

" You assail a whole class of society in order to praise 
a woman who in Egypt would have been a Cleopatra. ' ' 
I5 1 



" That is too severe. Diana was what Sir Lukin 
called her — ' the loyalest woman anywhere. ' He 
pictured her completely in one of his brusque sen- 
tences : ' She's man and woman in brains, and legged 
like a deer, and breasted like a swan, and a regular 
sheaf of arrows in her eyes. Her one error was that 
marriage of hers.' " 

' ' Sir Lukin and you have pointed the way to her 
greatest fault," said Adrian. " If she had been the 
right sort of woman she would have made a charm- 
ing husband out of Warwick instead of wrecking his 
life. He had the stuff of an English gentleman in 
him." 

" He had inherited the prejudices of six or eight 
generations of social prigs, and he never could have 
appreciated a bright and starry spirit like Diana." 

" She was weak, vain, emotional, and, like most 
women, betrayed the first important secret that was 
entrusted to her," said Adrian. 

" She was sincere, affectionate, and benevolent. 
She tried hard to make a bright corner in a cruel 
world which loves falsehood and the dark. I'll ad- 
mit she failed, wo fully and disastrously ; but on a 
Christmas Day like this, when your altruism ought to 
come to the surface, you should give credit to her 
idealism. The failure of such a woman is not anti- 
climax. I like to think of Tom Redworth as the 
happiest of men with Diana as his wife. The mis- 
tletoe hanging to that tree over there by the road- 
side calls up a Christmas picture in great contrast to 
i5 2 



this fragrant, flower -scented place. I can see The 
Crossways on the Downs, covered with snow — a 
bleak and wintry English landscape. But beyond 
the threshold of the Crossways you enter into warmth, 
cheeriness, good-fellowship. The rooms are decked 
with mistletoe and holly ; Emmy's godchild is danc- 
ing in joy before a tree hung with the treasures of 
fairy-land ; in the library Sir Lukin, Redworth, Arthur 
Rhodes, Whitmonby, and Harry Wilmers are tossing 
wit and story back and forth, feathered with laughter. 
And on the hearth before the grate kneels Diana, 
with the ' first-fire glow ' touching her features as it 
did one bleak night, years ago. Now, as then, Red- 
worth imagines her ' a Madonna on an old black 
Spanish canvas. ' She is holding the hand of a sweet- 
faced invalid, who rests beside her in an easy-chair, 
and I believe it is that blessed woman, Emmy, who 
still serenely lingers ' on the dark decline of the un- 
illumined verge between the two worlds.' Outside, 
the Christmas bells are ringing." 

" Come, Dupont, you have been dreaming," said 
Adrian. " Those are the chimes in the old tower of 
Carmello Mission, brought a century ago from Spain. 
Let me call you back to this continent with these 
lines of Stevenson's : 

" ' Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and 
play, 
Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey ; 
Watching all the mighty whalebones lying buried by the breeze, 
Tiny sandypipers, and the huge Pacific Seas.' " 

153 



A CURE FOR THE MALADY OF CLEVERNESS 

THERE has been a good deal of moralizing on the 
death of Dr. Holmes as closing a notable period 
in American letters, with lamentations over the pres- 
ent decadence through the malady of "cleverness." 
The young men who are writing these lamentations 
are suffering from this same malady of cleverness 
themselves. It is one of the prerogatives of clever- 
ness to " sass " its contemporaries — particularly if 
they are American. The proper thing is to be so 
civilized that you appreciate the art and letters of all 
countries except your own. When Dr. Holmes was 
young he became one of a coterie of other young men 
who believed in their country and in themselves and 
in each other. Of course all that was very provincial 
from our point of view. They ought to have spent 
their youth and enthusiasm in telling each other how 
very crude they were; that the place to learn to write 
poetry was England, and fiction, France. Instead of 
Longfellow's writing in admiration of Hawthorne in 
the North American at a time when he needed praise, 
he ought to have pointed out how very narrow and 
provincial were all the " Twice-told Tales," with no 
154 



glimpse in them of anything beyond a New England 
village. Longfellow could have done that beautifully, 
for he had been ' ' abroad ' ' and knew a thing or two. 
But all of those young men believed in being genuine 
American writers rather than imitation foreign ones. 
They took the material nearest their hands and hearts, 
and made the most of it. 

When you get down to the bottom of it, you'll 
probably conclude that there was a pretty fine moral 
quality back of all their optimism that put fire into 
their writings — and that was "loyalty," a virtue of 
which little is said nowadaj's, except during polit- 
ical campaigns. It used to mean a man of honest 
convictions and attachments to which he stuck 
through evil and good report. It gave a unity and 
stability to his career, whether he was a mechanic or a 
poet. There was and is a steadying quality about 
loyalty which frees a man from a host of unnecessary 
worries and apprehensions, and keeps him young in 
spirit and enthusiasm. 

All of which is no excuse for the prejudices of 
ignorance. Holmes and his contemporaries were men 
who tried to know something of the best that was be- 
ing done in the world ; but they believed in applying 
that knowledge in and for America. 

There is one thing strongly in favor of the clever 
young men of to-day — and that is their health of body 
and mind. The spread of college and amateur ath- 
letics has had a great deal to do with it. A large 
part of their cynicism is simply disgust with the mor- 
*55 



bid introspection of the school of American writers 
which prevailed a few years ago. A healthy young 
man is likely to say that it is " all rot " — and he is 
pretty nearly right about it. He is beginning to 
write some books to please himself, and they are full 
of the enthusiasm of health. They are, perhaps, a 
little materialistic, which is natural, for youth is ma- 
terial in its motives. 

A good healthy organism will be pleased with its 
surroundings, or at least see what is good in them. 
By and by these healthy young writers will begin to 
see and write about what is best in their own country ; 
and then all their cynicism will vanish like a mist. 
They will be surprised to see how their own country- 
men will buy their books, and talk about them. For 
the American is more anxious to think well of his 
country than the American newspaper or novelist will 
permit him to think. 



156 



THE PATRIOTIC NOVEL 

THE flags were flying the other day on all the high 
buildings in the city, to signify that it was the 
birthday of a patriot. It was a beautiful day, and, 
as the flags fluttered against the blue, solid citizens 
raised their eyes from the streets, and felt a little tre- 
mor in their hearts, especially if they were over forty 
and recalled what intense emotions the flag stood for 
when they were in their youth. 

But the bulk of the people on the streets were un- 
der thirty, and to them the flag is a symbol of merry- 
makings — a fetich that clubs and hotels and theatres 
display on days that are devoted to pleasure. They 
associate it somehow with picnics of the John J. 
O'Malley Association, which is organized for spoils ; 
with parades of grizzled veterans who, the cynical 
assert, are organized for pension raids ; or, with the 
topmost girl in the closing spectacle of a ballet or 
comic opera. 

The boy from the country has still another associa- 
tion with the flag — the rural cemetery where a score or 
more of graves are marked with little weather-stained 
flags that set apart the resting-places of patriots. 
i57 



Even for him the flag stands for a day of fun, for an 
incongruous procession where marched all the odd 
characters of the village, and a hay -wagon covered 
with bunting in which rode the local beauties, gor- 
geous in white muslin with red and blue sashes, and 
carrying wreaths of flowers. 

And for old and young alike who read the papers 
there is somewhere in a cranny of the mind a well- 
defined idea that the flag nowadays is a symbol of 
political bluster, and that the modern patriot is the 
man who goes to Congress " for the glory of the old 
flag and an appropriation." 

There is nothing in the fiction or general literature 
of the decade to counteract this decay of patriotism 
as a sentiment. Indeed the men of judgment and 
education are rather afraid of the sentimental side of 
it — it has been associated with so much that is imprac- 
tical, wrong-headed, and hypocritical. When the 
patriot creeps into our fiction at all, it is to be made 
fun of, to be shown up as a ludicrous person, or a rather 
awkward knave. Our novelists would rather analyze 
the perturbations of the heart of an immature girl, or 
the rascalities of a " gilded youth," than show us the 
development of the character of a really patriotic 
man, who stands in his community for integrity, 
fidelity, enthusiasm in all things relating to his coun- 
try, his state, his own town, his home. He is not 
dead by any means, for almost every hamlet has him 
in some stage of development. He stands for the 
best Americanism, and the encouraging thing is that 
158 



he has the respect and often the admiration of the 
community in which he lives. That is strong enough 
proof that the country at large knows real patriotism 
when it sees it. 

But surely it ought to be in our fiction ! French, 
German, and Italian novels are permeated with it — 
for their novelists realize that they are appealing to 
the strongest passion, but one, in the breast of man. 
Looked at merely from the side of Art, we ought to 
have more of it, for it is inspiring, elevating, often 
dramatic. 

And then it is clean, and decent, and manly — and 
a big-brained man can feel that he is not engaged in 
the work of a " woman-novelist " if he writes a really 
patriotic novel. 



159 



